These are the most common surnames of any country in the world

Are you an average Swiss? Then your name is Müller. Because Müller is the most common surname in our country, followed by Meier and Schmid. The advantage is clear: With about 53,000 people, the Müllers make up only 0.6 percent of the permanent population in Switzerland. This shows how great the diversity of surnames in Switzerland is. According to the Federal Statistical Office (BfS), there are 228,455 different surnames in Switzerland.

Worldwide, there are a few more: According to the largest name database in the world, forebears.io, about 30 million surnames exist. The hit list is dominated by Chinese names. The Wangs are at the top with about 107 million representations, followed by the Lis and the Zhangs.

The most common German-language surname is Schmidt at position 486 with 1,087 million representatives, the Müllers – number 1 in Germany and Switzerland – are only slightly behind with 1,077 million namesakes. The reason: The name Schmidt, which stems from the blacksmith trade, has been preserved in its original form much more often than Müller in the English-speaking emigrant countries of the US, Canada and Australia. In the US there are only 71 Müllers, but almost 200,000 Schmidts.

» Here you can see how often your surname is used worldwide.

This is pretty amazing: because the most common surname in the US is Smith, the actual translation of Schmidt or Schmid. Smith is also at the top in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It is also notable that Garcia is the most common surname in Spain, but Hernandez, Rodriguez and Gonzalez are the most common surnames in the former colonies in Central and South America.

By the way, surnames have only been around for about 5000 years, but they only really became popular, at least in Europe, in the Middle Ages. Due to the increasing population, the first name was no longer sufficient at a certain point. People were given a surname to better distinguish them.

But where do our surnames actually come from? Scholars roughly distinguish between six different categories: a surname can stem from a character trait, an occupation, the name of a place, another geographic feature, an ancestor, or a patronage.

Especially in Europe and North America, surnames that stem from professions are very common. In Asia, Africa and South America, surnames referring to a character trait or ancestor are the norm.