American Language Supplement 2 (81 page)

It will be noted that all these first fifty names save
Cohen
are of British origin, but it should not be forgotten that many of them, notably
Smith, Johnson
and
Miller
, conceal large numbers of non-British names that have been changed.
²
The German name of
Müller
, for example, has almost vanished from American directories: the umlaut has either been dropped, making it
Muller
, or is represented by
ue
, making it
Mueller
, or there has been a bold leap to
Miller
. Most of the dominating British names are English, but there are several that suggest Scottish origins,
e.g., Johnston
,
³
or Welsh,
e.g., Jones, Lewis
and
Owens
, and at least one,
Burke
, is Irish. All other efforts that have been made to analyze the national onomatology have led to closely similar results. Of 2,474,502 officers and men of the Navy in World War II, 21,476, or one in every 115, were named
Smith
, and following came 15,045
Johnsons
and 11,035
Joneses
.
¹
In the Army there were 54,180
Smiths
, 41,580
Johnsons
, 29,960
Browns
, 28,140
Williamses
, 25,720
Joneses
and 25,620
Millers
.
²
On the roll of the Veterans Administration, in 1946, there were 13,000
John Smiths
, and 8,000 of them had no middle initial.
³
On June 1, 1929 the American Council of Learned Societies’ Committee on Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the United States issued a report showing the estimated numbers of persons in each 100,000 of population bearing the 200 most prevalent surnames. Its figures follow:

It will be noted that this list shows a number of plainly non-British names,
e.g., Meyer, Schultz, Cohen
and some of the forms in -
son
and -
sen
. A great many German and Jewish
Schmidts
must be concealed among the
Smiths
, but there is still room for 71
Schmidts
per 100,000, or more than the number of
Armstrongs, Bradleys, Dixons, Elliotts
or
Fergusons
. As for
Cohen
, it outranks
Carpenter, Chapman, Dixon, Duncan, Fuller, Harper, Hopkins, Knight
and
Spencer
, and crowds
Grant, Hawkins, Perkins, Warren
and
Weaver. Smith
, of course, is an occupational name, but in modern times the number of smiths in the population is certainly not enough to account for its dominance among surnames. The explanation lies in the fact that in the days when it was first used the term signified any craftsman employing a hammer, and hence included wood- and stone- as well as metal-workers.
¹
There is some reason for believing that
Smith
was once an even more common surname than it is today. In 1876, for example, a writer in the
Galaxy
²
said that one out of every 70 New Yorkers then bore it, and that the ratio had been one in 83 in 1825, but today the Manhattan telephone directory shows not much beyond one in 300. This decline, of course, is partly to be accounted for by the extraordinarily heavy non-British immigration into the New York area. The Army and Social Security figures and the telephone directories of other cities and towns show that elsewhere about one American in every hundred is still a
Smith
. Thus it remains the leading surname in the United States, as it is in England, Scotland and Wales.
³
It is surpassed by
Cohen
in Manhattan
⁴
and by
Johnson
in Chicago, but in both cases it is a close runner-up, and nearly everywhere else it is first.
⁵

Among the names that follow it there are differing arrangements in different places. For the United States as a whole the order is
Smithy, Johnson, Brown, Williams, Miller, Jones, Davis, Anderson, Wilson, Taylor, Thomas, Moore, White, Martin, Thompson, Jackson, Harris
and
Lewis
, with
Cohen
in forty-first place and
Burke
in forty-fifth, but in New York City
Cohen
is in first place and
Murphy, Kelly, Meyer
and
Schwartz
are among the first ten.
¹
In Chicago, with
Johnson
in first place, those that follow in order are
Smith, Anderson, Miller, Brown, Peterson, Jones, Williams, Wilson
and
Thompson
. In Philadelphia the order is
Smith, Miller, Brown, Jones, Johnson, Wilson, Kelly, Williams, Taylor
and
Davis
. In Boston the first five are
Smith, Sullivan, Brown, Johnson
and
Murphy
, in New Orleans they are
Smith, Levy, Miller, Williams
and
Brown
, in San Francisco they are
Smith, Johnson, Brown, Miller
and
Williams
, and in northern New Jersey they are the same, but arranged
Smith, Miller, Brown, Johnson
and
Williams
.
²
The Social Security returns show that other common surnames tend to clump in distinct regions. Thus
Adams, Bailey, Jenkins
and
Nelson
are most numerous in Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan, and
Moore
in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. In Grand Rapids, Mich., in a region of heavy Dutch settlement; the first five names are
Smith, Johnson, Miller, Brown
and
Anderson
, but the sixth is the Dutch
DeVries
, the ninth is
DeYoung
(
DeJong
) and the eleventh is
Van Dyke
.
³
Throughout Minnesota
Johnson
is so widespread that bearing it is
a political asset, and some years ago a member of the clan became a formidable candidate for office by simply announcing his name: though he offered no platform and made no campaign he polled 44,049 votes out of 151,686 cast.
¹