How Common Is My Last Name? Surname Frequency Checker
Type a last name to see how many Americans carry it today, its national rank, and how it compares with the most common surnames in the country.
Free · No sign-up · Your search is never stored. Estimates from SSA birth records (1880–2024) and U.S. Census surname data.
How surname frequency is measured in the U.S.
The U.S. Census Bureau publishes a surname file after each census covering every surname borne by at least 100 people — 162,254 surnames in the 2010 file. Smith leads it with about 2.4 million bearers counted in 2010 (roughly 2.7 million scaled to today's population). Surnames below the 100-bearer threshold are not published, for privacy — so if your surname returns no result, fewer than 100 Americans likely carry it, which makes it exceptionally rare.
The 15 most common surnames in America
| Rank | Surname | U.S. bearers today (est.) | Statistics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smith | 2,704,922 | View → |
| 2 | Johnson | 2,140,056 | View → |
| 3 | Williams | 1,799,518 | View → |
| 4 | Brown | 1,591,109 | View → |
| 5 | Jones | 1,578,314 | View → |
| 6 | Garcia | 1,291,156 | View → |
| 7 | Miller | 1,285,971 | View → |
| 8 | Davis | 1,236,057 | View → |
| 9 | Rodriguez | 1,212,326 | View → |
| 10 | Martinez | 1,173,833 | View → |
| 11 | Hernandez | 1,155,146 | View → |
| 12 | Lopez | 968,293 | View → |
| 13 | Gonzalez | 931,203 | View → |
| 14 | Wilson | 887,863 | View → |
| 15 | Anderson | 868,511 | View → |
Surnames follow different rules than first names
First names rise and fall with fashion; surnames change slowly, mostly through immigration and marriage. That is why the surname table is steadier over decades — and why a surname's rank tells you more about family history and migration than about trends. To see how many people share your exact first and last name together, run both names through the tool above or the name combination checker.