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A surname, also known as a last name or family name, is a hereditary name passed down from one generation to another. It is used to identify and distinguish individuals within a family or lineage. Surnames often reflect a person's ancestry, occupation, or geographic origin.
To generate a report about the history of your family name, go to our surname search page and enter your last name. You may learn about: Your last name's meaning and history; Where your family lived in the U.S. and the UK, if you had ancestors there; When your family immigrated to the U.S. The average life expectancy of people with your last name
Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Search surname lived. Within census records, you can often find information like name of household members, ages, birthplaces, residences, and occupations.
Surname Meanings and Origins. The most common last names in the U.S., according to 2010 Census Bureau data, are largely of European origin. And while the use of last names is quite common today, once upon a time in Europe most of the population did not use surnames.
Ancestry® helps you understand your genealogy. A family tree takes you back generations—the world's largest collection of online family history records makes it easy to trace your lineage.
Historically, surnames evolved as a way to sort people into groups - by occupation, place of origin, clan affiliation, patronage, parentage, adoption, and even physical characteristics (like red hair). Many of the modern surnames in the dictionary can be traced back to Britain and Ireland.
Ancestry can typically tell you the ethnic origin of your surname, which you may already know. But it can also tell you if your name is occupational, habitational (based on a place), or descriptive, and you might even discover where your name originated.
Learn about how surnames originated and the official definition of a surname. Discover the difference between a last name and a surname.
Historically, surnames evolved as a way to sort people into groups - by occupation, place of origin, clan affiliation, patronage, parentage, adoption, and even physical characteristics (like red hair). Many of the modern surnames in the dictionary can be traced back to Britain and Ireland.
Historically, last names may have helped identify people based on where they lived and their occupations. Sometimes, last names such as “Short” and “Swift” were even created from an individual’s specific physical characteristics or personality traits.