A person's country of birth or origin can often be determined by their surname
Employees of the U.S. Census Bureau counted the number of surnames recorded in the 2010 census. As in decades past, Smiths, Johnsons, Williams, and Browns predominate in the United States. According to the ShareAmerica portal, the latest lists of the most common surnames now include Spanish ones. While in 1990 there were no Spanish surnames among the fifteen most common in the United States, now there are six in that list, led by the surname Garcia.
The diversity that characterizes the United States is achieved not only through immigrants from Latin America. In the 2010 census, about 162,000 surnames were recorded more than a hundred times. It has been established that since 2000, the fastest growth has been in surnames such as Zhang, Li, Han, Vasquez, Wang, Singh, Chen, and Patel. The origin of these Americans can be guessed without difficulty.
List of the most common surnames in the United States in 1990, 2000, and 2010
*According to U.S. Census Bureau data.