The name is written Smyth, and Smythe. William the Lion. The most common of all surnames, and might of itself furnish matter enough for a volume. The word is derived from the Anglo—Saxon Smitan, to smite or strike. Among the Highland clans, the smith ranked third in dignity to the chief, from his skill in fabricating military weapons, and his dexterity in teaching the use of them. In Wales there were three sciences which a villain tenant could not teach his son without the consent of his lord, Scholarship, Bardism, and Smithcraft.
This was one of the liberal sciences, and the term had a more comprehensive sense than we give to it at this time. The smith must have united in this profession, different branches of knowledge which are now practiced separately, such as raising the ore, converting it into metal, etc. The term was originally applied to artificers in wood as well as metal, in fact, to all mechanical workmen, which accounts for the great frequency of the name.
The New York City Directory for in which the names of the heads of families only, are given. We see in the papers, that John Smith dies, is married, hanged, drowned, and brutally murdered, daily! John Smith doesn't identify anybody, and is therefore no name at all. This numerous family is the subject of many laughable anecdotes and witty sallies. A wag, on a certain occasion, coming late to the theater, and wishing to get a seat, shouted at the top of his voice, "Mr.
Smith's house is on fire! In many neighborhoods the name is so frequent that it is necessary to append some soubriquet to identify the person. But the best piece of humor relating to the name is the following which we take from Lower, which appeared some years since in the newspapers, under the title of.
Another learned pundit, in the Philadelphia Gazette, contends for the universality of the name John Smith, not only in Great Britain and America, but among all kindred and nations on the face of the earth. Beginning with the Hebrew, he says, the Hebrews had no Christian names, consequently they had no Johns, and in Hebrew the name stood simply Shem or Shemit; but in the other nations John Smith is found at full, one and indivisible.
He was the founder of the celebrated temple of Smithopolis Magna. Originally Faber or Le Fevre. See Faber. This name, arising from an important industry, the iron manufacture of the Middle Ages which was chiefly employed in the fabrication of arms , comprises families of Norman and other origins.
The name S. Reginald Faber, t. William I. In Middlesex Roger Faber possessed estates Rot. William F. Smith: a general term. There were Whitesmiths, i. It is least frequent in the three south - west counties of Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset, where, it may be truly said, the Smiths do not flourish.
It is also similarly infrequent in Wales. Its great home is in Worcestershire and in the adjacent counties of Gloucester, Warwick, and Stafford. It is also very numerous in Essex, in the east of England. In the extreme north it is rather less frequent; but it extends in numbers across the border, and is established over the greater part of Scotland, being most numerous in the counties south of the Forth and the Clyde. If we divide England into three parts by two lines, joining the Thames with the Severn, and the Wash with the Dee, we shall observe that the Smiths are most numerous in the middle division, less frequent in the northern division, and least numerous in the south.
Entire books have been written about the great English name of Smith. In this form it has remained unchanged for over 1, years, apart from the spelling variations of Smyth or Smythe.
However, occasionally the name Smythe will in fact be a location name, deriving from Smithy. The surname Smith has also frequently become double-barrelled, as for example in Robinson-Smith. Besides being easily the most popular name in England, Smith is also the most popular in Scotland, and in the United States where the name will frequently have been anglicised from foreign sources, such as the German Schmidt. In Wales, however, Smith comes second to its greatest rival, Jones.
Besides the previously mentioned German form, there are also many other foreign versions of Smith. Once again, these are only the simple forms and, like our English Smith, they also have their compound forms. Early examples of the name Smith were sometimes Latinised in the records to Faber. This name appears in the records from the Domesday Book onwards. However, the surname Smith has appeared in all records from the very earliest times and pre-dates the Domesday Book.
One enterprising branch of the Smith family have blazoned the name on hundreds of British high streets. The younger W. During his colourful career he took part in the Peninsular War, witnessed with horror the burning of Washington DC during the War of , and fought at Waterloo. Transferred to Cape Colony during the Cape Frontier War, he made an historic ride, galloping the miles from Cape Town to Grahamstown in under six days, to tell terrified colonists that help was on the way.
It is his wife whose memory is recalled by the town of Ladysmith in Natal. Clergyman, wit and essayist, Smith was lauded in his lifetime as the greatest master of trenchant ridicule since Jonathan Swift and Voltaire, although he lacked their vitriol.
For a quarter of a century he deflated pomposity and exposed hypocrisy as he fought for parliamentary reform and for emancipation of Catholics. Joseph Smith —44 , founder of the Mormon Church, claimed that an angel had presented him with golden plates and a book written in hieroglyphics which he translated with the aid of magic stones and had published as The Book of the Mormon. Having led his followers from New York State to Illinois, Smith claimed personal divinity and ruled with an iron hand until his plans to introduce polygamy caused violence and led to his arrest.
While in goal he was killed by an angry mob. In the time of Mary Tudor it was the place where heretics were burnt at the stake. English-born Assyriologist George Smith —76 achieved world-wide fame in by his translation of fragments of Chaldean tablets in the British Museum which described The Flood.
Public interest ran so high that a London paper financed an expedition to search for the missing fragment. On the fifth day of digging Smith found it-an almost miraculous stroke of luck.
His Chaldean Account was a nineteenth-century best-seller. Smith-related places and geographic features are popular but not nearly as dominating as the surname itself. The United States has 26 related-name towns-all are relatively small. Related-name geographic features are common.
With about , namesakes Smith is the most popular surname in England and Wales. There are over 69, Smiths in Scotland where it is also the most popular name. In Ireland it is estimated that with about 36,, Smith is the 5th most popular surname. Smith is notably popular in and around Leicester where an estimated one in about 55 families bears the name. In descending numerical order Nottingham, Birmingham and Coventry are other Smith strongholds.
Around the world Smiths are most common in Durban one in families , Sydney one in and Auckland one in The United States has more Smiths than the entire population of West Yorkshire-an estimated total of just over 2,, makes this their most popular surname.
View the most partisan surnames in The United States. For other possible spellings of this last name click here. The surname is the th most frequently used surname globally It is held by around 1 in 1, people. The last name is predominantly found in The Americas, where 57 percent of Smith reside; 54 percent reside in North America and 54 percent reside in Anglo-North America.
Smith is also the 15, th most commonly occurring first name worldwide, borne by 62, people. About There is significant debate over who truly descends from the original Wang clans of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, because many royal families took the name Wang when their kingdoms fell under the Qin dynasty. According to Shanghai Daily, rebranding everyone as Wang was a strategic play to hide their identities and avoid assassination, but hold on to royal tradition.
Becoming more popular in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United Kingdom , Jones is an English and Welsh variation of John. Genealogy Bank goes into further detail, pointing out that anything ending in "-son," is a patronymic, meaning "son of John. John name comes from Latin, which traces back to Greek, which goes further back to the Hebrew Bible, meaning "Yahweh has favoured.
John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist and nearly one thousand other Christian saints" were relevant, according to Genealogy Bank. Johnson is the second most common surname in the US, after Smith.
The Chinese character means "plum" or "plum tree," but the name can also mean "minister. Li became popular after Gao Yao's reign when, during the Tang Dynasty, leaders would gift the name Li to their most trusted allies and fiercest warriors. Brown really might've been as simple as naming someone after their hair or eye color. In fact, names based on appearances are historically common. Professor Richard Coates , the leader of the team of researchers whose findings on surnames were published in the "Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland," has a funny theory about this: "There are … names where the origin describes the original bearer such as Short … though Short may, in fact, be an ironic 'nickname' surname for a tall person.
This Spanish and Portuguese name is found in medieval records in the Latin form Garsea, meaning bear. According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica , it's the most popular surname in the country of Spain and is popular in Spanish-speaking areas; it's the most common name in California and Texas.
In , it was the sixth most popular name in the US, up from 18th in , according to Vice. Patel is not the most common surname in India, meaning that this specific sect of agriculturists was driven from India in droves to find different lives in English-speaking countries.
The English version, Miller, is one of the top 10 surnames in America. Dan Nosowitz wrote Atlas Obscura that while Americans can trace their last names to their ancestors' trades, country of origin, and even town of origin, last names are relatively new in Vietnamese culture. In fact even the name 'Vietnam' comes from the Chinese; 'viet' is the Vietnamese version of the word the Chinese used to describe the people southeast of Yunnan Province. Family names in Vietnam came first and were patronymic in nature until Chinese imperialists began bestowing last names on them to keep track of who they were taxing.
The "Nguyen" designation probably comes the Chinese "Ruan" imperialist.
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