About
Surname meanings you can check.
Last Names explains where family names come from, what they mean and how many people carry them. Look up a surname to see its origin, similar spellings, the countries it is linked with and its figures from the US Census.
Where the information comes from
- Counts, ranks and population shares are from the US Census Bureau's 2010 surname file, which lists every surname held by at least 100 people (about 162,000 names). The figures are the Bureau's; they are not estimates of ours.
- Meanings and origins are short summaries of the usual explanations. Where a name has more than one possible source, the entry says so rather than choosing one. About 2,000 of the most common names have a written entry; every other name has its figures and similar spellings.
- Every name page links to outside sources, such as Forebears and the Internet Surname Database. For any name you care about, compare them with the printed dictionaries: Reaney and Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames, and Hanks, Dictionary of American Family Names.
A note of care
Surname origins are rarely settled. One spelling can have several unrelated sources, and a name that looks like it belongs to one country may have been respelt from another. Treat what you read here as a starting point for your own research, and see our guides for how to carry it further.
Corrections and questions
If you find a mistake, write to info@last-names.net with the name and what you found.