h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, if English surnames reflect past occupations why is Smith so popular. OK a small rural mediaeval village, it would have a blacksmith, maybe a siler smith but not many others compared to say bakers, butchers, and mostly farmers. So why are the surnames Baker, Butcher and Farmer more common than Smith?

This is keeping me up at nights.....

CH


Also Capital X at the start of words - er Why? everyone pronounces it the same as a Z.

I am a supply teacher and as a consequence I get to do a lot of differant school registers.I can say hand on heart that Smith isn't as common a name as you might think.Neither is Baker or Farmer.The spelling of first names however is as varied as the weather.
I am continually in trouble for pronouncing names wrong but when the spelling bears no resemblance to the pronounced name it is confusing.I am not referring to ethnic names at all.I think many of the spellings may be due to confusion based on a high alcoholic intake prior to registration of the birth.The differant spellings of Kylie number above 20 already.

Ah, but how many of these Kylies actually, on the birth certificates are spelt differently, is it not a case of a 11 year old girl realising the true horror of being a Kylie, starts to insist that it is spelt Kiélé (or whatever)?

CH

Smith and Jones are traditionally held to be the most common surnames in Britain (or amongst English-speaking people). Jones is obvious; it derives from 'son of John), and John is probably the most common man's name (or it was). Smith derives from the trade. It's not that there were more smiths than, say, farmers or bakers. It's probably that there would be a lot of farmers in one area, so they picked something else as a surname. There would usually only be one smith, so he could use his trade as a surname. Every village probably had a smith, so there would be one family in every village with that surname, whereas there might not be anybody with the surname 'Farmer' or 'Baker'.

How about this as an aditional suggestion?

Smiths were skilled men who were respected and very important to their community. Since physical effort was required they had a tendency to be larger and more muscular than the average male(?). Their position meant that they tended to be financially better off than the average male.
i.e. they were more attractive to women and thus had more offspring, hence more Smiths.

(I have just made this up so I'm OK with being wrong here, but it seems possible to me).

So why do they insist that it is pronounced as Kylie then?

Checking through my old customer database, I find the commonest surname to be Patel!!!!!!!!!

'G'

I have read that the top 5 UK surnames are (1) Smith (2) Jones (3) Brown (4) Williams (5) Taylor.
I was a little surprised to read Taylor was so high. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the source of this information (so it's as reliable as everything else on the web!).

Jones overtook Smith in England nearly 20 years ago. 20 years before that it was (seemingly) Smith,Brown,Jones,Robinson. Where have all the Robinsons gone?

Registrar General's annual stats. Personal interest as I became a Jones 30 years ago.

Words which start with X are mostly Greek and pronounced thusly.

I also heard that Patel is the most common name in England.

There may well be a distinct difference between name frequencies in England as opposed to the UK as a whole.

Well, Robinson Crusoe stranded on a deserted island. Then there was a TV-series called Swiff Family Robinson about a whole family stranded on a deserted island. And now there is a TV-show going on called Robinsons-Ekspeditionen where 16 ppl are put on a deserted island, and taped all the time. You know it as Survivor. So I´d say that all the Robinsons that used to be in the UK has probably all gone to deserted islands for some reason.

I always thought Clark was a common name too.