Today’s society is striking in its diversity and heterogeneity. This is a mixture, a mix of people completely different in appearance, speech, culture and origin. The last of the signs has always aroused genuine interest in people. After all, the past is history, full of events and shrouded in mystery. One of the keys to the solution is our surnames, which indicate that a person belongs to a particular clan or family.
Today we would like to talk about a very unusual and interesting map. It was created by the NetCredit platform. This world map shows the most common surnames for each country.
According to experts, there are five main options for the origin of surnames:
from geographical names;
professions and crafts;
names of father or ancestor;
personal qualities;
names of patrons.
The beginning of the use of surnames dates back to 2852 BC. The birthplace of middle names is China. At that time, surnames helped in collecting census data. And very soon this idea spread throughout the world.
In Western Europe, where the population was growing too rapidly, surnames were used as a way to distinguish one person from another. Moreover, the names that most people received were of a professional nature.
What does the NetCredit card show? Looking at it, we see that:
The most common surname in Germany is Müller, which translates as “miller”.
In Australia, Great Britain, the USA, Canada and other English-speaking countries, the most common surname is Smith. Blacksmiths bore this name.
The first most popular surname in the world is Van. This is a Chinese patronymic name that means “king” in Mandarin (the most famous Chinese dialect). About 76 million people in the world have this name! In second place is the Indian surname Devi and 69 million people!
Central American and Caribbean surnames reflect the region’s colonial history. For example, in the Republic of Haiti, which was a French colony from 1697 to 1804, the most common surname is Jean (the French form of John).
So, we only talked about some areas of this unusual map. You can see the rest yourself by scrolling down the page.
