Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Surnames

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer/podcaster Andrew Ti (‘Yo, Is This Racist?’, Sub-Optimal Pods) for a look at why surnames are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode

Surnames. Known for being last names. Famous for being firsts, too. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why surnames are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by the great Andrew T. Andrew was one of my guests on the very first ever episode of CifPod about U.S. post offices. If you know this podcast well, you've heard him before. And I hope you check out all of Andrew's podcasting. He co-hosts the wonderful show Yo, Is This Racist? and a bunch more shows because he and his co-host,

Tawny Newsome, started their own independent listener-supported network. It is called Suboptimal Pods. It's called Suboptimal Pods because it is the optimal place to subscribe to Tawny Newsome and Andrew T's stuff. Suboptimalpods.com is the URL. Also, that website has a link, and I'll have my own link and my own show links, about an upcoming live episode of Yo! Is This Racist? And it's very soon. Yo! Is This Racist is live September 10th at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Andrew recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are

very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about surnames. Surnames are a patron-chosen topic. Thank you very much to Ryan Bracey for that excellent suggestion. It's both self-explanatory and endless. We absolutely will not cover every surname convention, every surname history, every surname cultural practice in the world. I picked a set of them. I think they're an interesting set, and I think you're really going to enjoy the show. I picked a set of them. I think they're an interesting set, and I think you're really going to enjoy the show. So please sit back or everyone in the audience, alphabetize yourself by surname, right? We'll treat it like a school event and shout out to the people with a surnames. You get to go really fast. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Andrew T.

I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Andrew T., it is so good to have you back, as always. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. How do you feel about surnames? I actually have, in English and in Chinese, a pretty rare surname. So that's, I guess, like pretty... It's not something I think about a whole hell of a lot, mainly because my surname t was transliterated i guess in taiwan under the no longer really commonly used transliteration to english character system

so people with in with my chinese surname would be d uh because it's pronounced d um it's also anyway a very very very rare surname anyway for chinese folks um and then triply so because of where my i guess grandfather probably was the one who it was transliterated under um yeah that's amazing so so yeah super super. So probably statistically, I would confidently say no one is a T specifically because no one really uses that system or maybe they do in Taiwan still actually, but it's not, it was already a super rare surname and you know, it's, it's the by far less popular, if not obsolete system of transliteration to English. So no one's like that. However, the other tidbit is the only other really person in antiquity who has my Chinese surname is basically the Chinese Sherlock Holmes. Oh, tell me about him. This Judge D. I don't

really know much about him other than I'd read some of the fables and they're like, they're from feudal times. They're pretty like they're, they're, it's like, it's, it's less he's, he's like the Chinese Sherlock Holmes in that he's like the dude who like was the crime solving, like smarter guy. But the plots are like somewhere between complexity of like your average encyclopedia Brown episode or chapter or perry mason thing like it's it's in there it's not like an intricate like thing it's usually just like and then i noticed the incense was burning so much like the pile of ash means that this person's been dead for a day as opposed to an hour you know i guess like the further back you go in the past people have read so many fewer stories in their life so they're just like a grasshopper talked to an

can you believe it yeah it's like it's so much so much more there's no like need for that and i think they're they're built more as like parable type things i think. I should know more about my probable only ancestor of note. As far as I know. My Chinese history is not great, but as everyone listening to this can surely tell. Anyway, so yeah, for that reason, surnames are, I have a pretty weird surname. My sister's like the only Dr. T in the medical who's who or whatever.

And I, I probably that will stay that way because no kid of mine's are going to become a doctor. Oh, and I'm the end of the line. I thought you were going to say you weren't going to have kids, but like, no tons of kids and no doctors, not allowed to call that. No. Um, but, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so that, that is my relationship to surnames. Uh, that's an extremely rare one in English. And like, I genuinely, I w I would, I would say with, there's a, there's a like decent chance. I'm, you know, our family's the only one that ever went through the specific set of circumstances to have my english last name and can i ask i i think you said earlier that it's

it's traditionally pronounced d is that right d because the rising tone d d okay because i've seen it spelled pretty good oh thanks yeah should i, I think I've called you Andrew T before. Yeah. I mean, no. Oh, no, no, no. I don't, no one really, it's, yeah. I think that would be weird. Mostly because, I don't know.

But yeah, like, like we had some, like when I was young, my mom made friends with some mainland Chinese folks. I grew up in Michigan, but they must have been visiting the university or something. I'm not really sure. But she had only ever conversed with them in Chinese. Well, maybe in English as well. But anyway, suffice to say, they'd never seen our English last name written down. seen our english last name written down well and also because it's my mom and it's the you know it's not really as common to take the i guess it happens in america but like taking the the surname of the the husband um so she was always um alice uh went by alice yan that's my mom uh people could

find her if they i don't know um anyway, so. I'm going to bleep all that out. Just remove it completely. So they had never seen my surname, my and my dad and my sister's surname written down in English. So at one point they gave me a birthday card and they spelled it D-I because that was what the modern. Yeah, the character would transliterate to in English to them. So it's like, what's real, what's not. I mean, that, that whole system is just, you know, the fact that there's competing ways. It's the system under which Peking and Beijing are the same. You know, there, there, it isn't like a case where the name was changed.

It was the transliteration system was changed. Or like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. I almost feel like a podcast benefits from that. Because I was talking to a friend of the show, Teresa Lee, and she was telling me about how L-E-E and L-I are often the same name, just transliterated differently. And, and like being in audio, we'll just stick to the sounds, you know? Yeah.

Right. That has to be the most common one that people have encountered. Um, cause Lee is an incredibly common, uh, surname and yeah, it's not, um, yeah, like, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it isn't, it isn't because of pronunciation. So it's not a Cantonese Mandarin thing, because that does have different pronunciations that would be reasonably spelled different. These are the same Mandarin pronunciations simply written down in a different way. I guess the other part of it is even though it's transliterated T-I, it's still, it's just that the the transliteration system the t is meant to be a sort of d sound anyway so it's meant to denote

the same sound it's just that once we got here what are you gonna do actually it's pronounced d no it's hard to explain why it's you know this is who cares it's just t right yeah i guess whatever you're comfortable with and happiest with. And for basically everybody's surname, it's the same thing. Like, yeah. What feels good? I guess I hadn't really thought about it. Mainly because, yeah, it is a thing where my Chinese name feels so divorced from because, you know, what it is, is because Andrew, there's no like transliteration from my, my Chinese, um, given name to a Andrew. It's just, my mom just picked Andrew out of the first, she got bored. She was literally, she said that she was like, I was like three pages

into the baby book. It was like, just Andrew's fine. Um, but yeah, so, so i've never thought of like my english name which is the name i probably think of myself more under because i was born here um like my chinese name is just separate and therefore the surname even though they are technically gunning for the same thing and same sound yeah so yeah i think it'd be weird because it'd'd be, I guess it'd be call me Andrew D. It also does not flow very well. Cause Andrew, Andrew, yeah. Cause it's too, it's kind of like two rising sounds. So people would, in English would end up saying Andrew D. Um, and that is not right either. So I don't, I, there's no specific reason to encourage that. Right. Right. Yeah. That's so interesting. Thank you for sharing so much about that too.

That's so interesting. I, I had, I forgot, I actually had, but like had half coalesced when you sent the email and I've kind of forgot what the topic was. And I was like, Oh yeah, I have a whole, I have a whole thing about my last name because it's, it's very unique circumstances that got, got me to this, got us to here. Like it's unlikely ever to happen again.

And it probably hasn't happened to many people in history. And yeah, that's that. Yeah. I, that's my, my surname. Last name is relatively not unique because of Germany. Cause it's the German version of Smith. So like, so like millions and millions of people are called that like it's it's uh it's out there a lot but schmidt does seem like a it's a name that this is me just stabbing in the dark but it does feel like that's one that was transliterated differently for the same name

like oh yeah coming coming to english or just like, you know, a lot of like Ellis Island. It's like, you know, like close enough, good enough, like between like typos and like trying to fit in and things like that. It does seem like Schmidt has like or just I'm Smith now. Right. I'm sure a few just became Smiths. And yeah, it feels like very malleable. like very malleable like and i think germans benefited in the united states and also we'll talk about ellis island a lot later but i think oh sure yeah in the united states they benefited from same alphabet privilege like like i think there were a lot of germans who within germany became my spelling s-c-h-m-i-d-t or they became S-C-H-M-I-T-T just within Germany, like with nobody imposing that. And then both came over.

Right, right, right. Right. Yeah. There's also a lot of people S-C-H-M-I-T-T. And then I question whether we share a name. I'm like, I guess we do, but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is because it's also like, you know i know even less about well no that's probably not true i was gonna say i know less about german history than america than chinese history but it's probably pretty close which is not much for either there's some famous german history out there yeah uh yeah that's true i guess a lot of it really really it looms large um but um

yeah because it's like like you know presumably like a lot of surnames it's like, like, you know, presumably like a lot of surnames. It's like, you know, various tribes and things like that, like coming together. And so it's like, was it DT and TT? Were they different? Were they cousins? Or is it simply just like, you know, typos propagated? It could be anything, it feels like. I guess from a position of sufficient

ignorance anything could feel like anything everything everything feels like anything that's what i'm trying to say with you mentioning typos it made me think of that crazy german medieval font where it's all like pointy and and like i think it's called fractor is the name of the font. I'll link pictures of it, but like, I feel like that's a mega typo font. Like every letter just looks like a sword, you know, it's impossible to read, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God.

I'm going to look at it. Wait, I think. Yeah. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, this, uh, in this episode too, like I have a lot of here. Also, surnames are pretty global in so many different ways. So, folks, we won't hit every thing in the world, but I think we have a lot of interesting stuff. And I'll start with a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This is an all time big section for this.

But this week it's in a segment called Shake Your Stats. Watch yourself. Shake your stats. Show me what your number with. And that name was submitted by Brisbane Waterhammer. Thank you, Brisbane. I have a new name for this every week. Please make him as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to Sipod on Twitter or to Sipod at gmail.com.

Y'all missed out on Alex's performance face during that, which was just delightful. I think, and I'm looking at my numbers here, I think I'll start with one that relates to China, because we've gotten to talk about it with your background, Andrew. The first number will be 1.2 billion people. 2 billion people and 1.2 billion people is the approximate number of people in the people's republic of china specifically whose surnames come from a set of just 100 surnames oh like almost all of the population yeah is it's 86 percent have surnames from a set of just 100 options. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Honestly, 100 seems long. I bet you could dice it into a less pleasing round number, but more mind-boggling stat. Somewhere in the 34 region, there's still a very, very high percentage of that. It turns out someone has. Oh. About 30% of the population, 3-0, are from just five surnames. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That feels about right. Yeah. Surname distribution in China is about the same as income distribution in America. It's perfect. Right. It's perfect. Yeah, exactly.

It's perfect. Right. It's perfect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it turns out like for comparison, CNN covered this. They said that in the 2010 U.S. census in 2010, they found six point three million different surnames in the U.S. But in China and across Chinese people, we're just using the People's Republic of China as one big set. But across Chinese people and culture, there tend to be relatively few surnames. And the top five are number one, Wang, number two, Li, and then Zhang, Liu, and Chen. Those are the top five. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but like Li and Wang's there are different within them i

wonder if those are accounted for but either way yeah that that's that's about right yeah but then that's that's a that's a transliteration issue it's like who knows yeah since it's audio the they're spelling for wong as the number one name is w-a-n-G in Roman alphabet. Yeah, yeah. I wonder. I don't know. But even if you dice it that other way, I think the more important thing is it's very, relatively speaking, very few surnames. And also it varies a little bit.

Apparently the top surname in Taiwan is Chen, which is number five in the People's Republic. But either way, it creates an interesting situation where I think nobody's specifically counted. But according to the Atlantic, Wang is probably the number one surname on earth, because it's the number one surname across this population. Like, it's just statistically likely, basically. China, the theory for there being relatively few surnames is that China has had surnames longer than a lot of other places, in addition to the large population. And because the next number here is 4,000 years ago. And 4,000 years ago is the approximate time when Han Chinese people developed that practice of having surnames. People have not always had them,

and it kind of varies across the world when cultures and people have adopted them yeah well and but as far as like adopting them like there it's also like i would guess there has to be some version of like also because like obviously many many permutations but the area that basically is mostly china um has had sort of top-down rule for longer than anywhere else on Earth. So things like one powerful person having many, many offspring is much more likely, and also people being more likely to just survive because they have a similar like uh surname to someone in power um and and nearly natural select like i guess artificial selection for fewer last names yeah that could be some of it or family names family names first names yeah patron ryan bracy picked this topic and he specifically phrased it as surnames because i

think he was being globally thoughtful where and especially east asia the family name comes first a lot but i in growing up in the u.s we would just call it last names basically exclusively i don't know when i learned the name the word surname but it was later yeah yeah surname feels like such a i feel like i probably heard it in the context of like some it's so like british feeling to me but then it's like yeah yeah yeah but then i guess when you colonize especially when you're the colonizers of many places where surnames come first that's more useful in your language the british umpire will come up a lot. Yeah. And because speaking of them, like one example of a place that relatively recently developed surnames is England.

Apparently, they only started about 1000 years ago versus 4000 in China. And they really started after the Norman invasion in 1066. And that's according to genealogist John Titford, who wrote source for this it's called the penguin dictionary of british surnames like they they kind of picked it up from that northern france people as a practice and also they were administrating and a part of the the longevity of surnames in china is that there was like government there before there was government in some other places on a large scale yeah i think things like censuses like you need surnames when you need to write down everyone's name and who they are and but also then it feels like and this is just i'm wondering if i

will be proven that this is simply a procterful but the like schoolyard piece of wisdom, right, is that like so many British, I guess, English, English surnames are like occupation based, whereas like like in China, it's like more like tribal and regional and like family, like original family. So like a coop, if indeed it is true that coopers were named after, you know, people who were barrel makers when it was time to. That's right. Time to give out surnames. Coopers don't really have any particular, you know, aside from the fact that trades were probably passed down. But a cooper from different parts of England wouldn't necessarily be related to one another uh at as high a degree as like a d with you know because we're all in one horse village uh basically we are we are the d's are uh as far as i know more horse people than than city folks we're sort of low-rent mongolians um as i've been told i i was told like both sides of my family were dirt

farmers you know like i feel like kids maybe just in america or elsewhere we get told like yeah all your ancestors were this job it's like okay i don't know yeah yeah yeah yeah right no that's true like even as i say it like that, maybe my perception of like more trade mobility creates this incorrect impression. But because, yeah, maybe it's like, yes, even though people are just named by job, it is still very likely they are related to one another because, you know, once a Cooper, always a Cooper or, you know, whatever, Shoemaker or Smith or et cetera. Yeah. And we'll talk about that wisdom a little later. That's true. A lot of last names come from occupations, especially in like British names, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. With these names in China, it's such an old practice. Apparently, it's older than the invention of paper. Oh, right. According to Chen Zhaowei, who's an associate professor at Beijing Normal University, To Chen Zhaowei, who's an associate professor at Beijing Normal University, ancient China had tens of thousands of different surnames, and they would be inscribed on baboo or into bronze or woven into silks, like all different ways of recording it. But they think that chiefly because of just the length of doing that practice, like families keep intermarrying and, you know, each generation you can have a family have no male descendants or a lot of male descendants.

And so just over time, the amount of surnames narrowed naturally. Right. It's not intuitive, but I guess as you say it, you start to—right. Especially if children are just given half of the options of the two yeah surnames then it makes sense that they will narrow over time yeah if it's always dad's last name then it just in any given yeah or or yeah yeah right that yeah it just it reduces variability by some number i mean in a population of two it reduces the variability by 50 each time so i assume the math extrapolates for larger populations what if like adam and eve in the bible there was a part where the bible was like and they

picked adam's last name eve's last name forget it it's out yeah it's done does the bible have an origin of last names i there's a lot of names the bible really gives a about names but is anyone does anyone have a last name in the bible no i'm like i think our family name in my memory of it a lot of people have one of the other big sources of last names in a lot of cultures which is like people get called name son of name and a lot of last names especially like in in the last name johnson means son of john like there's a lot of right right origins like that yes but there's not a lot of like adam jenkins or whatever yeah yeah. Yeah. Hyphenated Jenkins, you know, like. Oh, man. Yeah.

Not a not a big Bible reader. I've had multiple classes that I've had to read the Bible. So I'm like, I can't think of a last name. But yeah, son of son of makes sense. Yeah. I can't think of a last name. But yeah, son of, son of makes sense. Yeah.

And also with the process of a surname pool shrinking over time, there's another potential example of it with Latin America. There's another source for this episode is Hispanic Surnames and Family History, which is a book by a genealogist named Lyman D. Platt. And he says that the pool of Latin American surnames has been recorded to shrink over time. Apparently, as of 1750, there were about 250,000 common surnames in Latin America. And by the 1990s, it was down to 60,000.

So 250 years, they went from 250,000 to 60,000. And they think it's the same reason, just over time time it narrowed down. The more I think it's like, I'm seeing like the computer simulation of like glowing balls with different colors for surnames. And as each parent goes out, there's only one. And then you're like, yeah, of course, over generations, it has to diminish unless a source of new surnames is introduced. Um, but globally, i guess it's still diminishing if as long as we keep up the patriarchal practice of right yeah whereas the hyphenate i guess

if you are going strictly by characters is a as a new is a novel source of right completely but we're just talking about the math here yeah but yeah so that's like kind of all of surnames over all of history in the world in a very short way and uh then getting into other practices and situations the next number here is three or four and there's another latin american thing that's three or four is the common number of parts of a name in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Oh, sure. Because I didn't know about all of this. It turns out that a lot of times people will have a given first name

and then like a second given name, like a second personal name, and then from there they'll have their father's surname and their mother's surname. That would give them four. Yeah. That feels like this is strictly from watching soccer that I have seen this a lot. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, yeah. Like four names. Yeah. Makes sense. I did. I looked up one example of it and I went with the president of Mexico, but then the next thing I checked is my favorite baseball player who's from cuba so yeah sports as a as a person in the u.s that can be one source of this yeah right well and but and also these are like folks um under i mean you know under no particular pressure to conform to anglicize their names.

Yeah, that's right. You know, they're rich. They're globally rich in their own countries. So why would you need to make Americans feel comfortable? Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'll give both examples. The baseball example is Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox. I've just always called him that.

It turns out his full name is Jose Dariel Abreu Correa. Because Dariel is just a second personal name in addition to his first name. And then Abreu is his father's surname. Correa is his mother's surname. But it's like U.S. practice and sports has turned me into just thinking of him as Abreu, his father's surname. Because the other one, and I know him from his whole name because I think just as the president of Mexico, he goes on and goes by it. He doesn't switch it for the United States. It's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And then Lopez is his father's surname.

Obrador is his mother's surname. It's just more parts. Yeah. Okay. And like, not the same thing thing but the next number here is three because three is the common number of parts of a name in russian culture yeah they uh if if people have heard like long russian names there's a lot of like vich or ovich in boys and a lot of ovna and ovna for girls it turns out russian names are a given

first name and then a middle patronymic name which is their dad's first name with a suffix on it with a gender on it yeah and then their surname after that it's like uh the guess Johnson is the typical son of John Johnson. And then daughter in Scandinavian culture, Scandinavian languages. Yeah. I couldn't find great sourcing for like the number one surname in every country. But the sourcing I could find for Iceland, the number one surname was John Stottir. Yeah. Which is like daughter of John. It's going up.

Yeah. It is like daughter of John. It's going on. Yeah. It's like, it makes sense. There's, there's marginally more girls than boys or girls names and boys names and marginally and probably many Johns. Yeah. It's like,

it's, it's like, it's like, it's one of those, like on a trivia night, like nearly deducible. It's like, it's like not

fun when everybody gets it like yeah okay yeah as long as we win some of our bar tab i guess that's the point not if everyone does and it's pointless well and uh and yeah examples for this russian thing because it it's amazing to me as like an even more dad driven surname and name. Male example here is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Right. It turns out Vladimir Putin's father's first name was also Vladimir. And so then he has a patronymic Vladimirovich in the middle. Yeah.

I mean, at a certain point, it's it is simply just like just information you're just cramming information in there yeah like logging family information like a database yeah that's it yeah it's like you could nearly you know if you knew the practice was being like stuck too rigidly you could probably like you know with a pretty quick brute force computer like like make a make a family tree you know or even just like on paper you can force computer make a family tree or even just on paper you can make a family tree just with a handful of names. There's just a limit to the number of configurations that could work. And there's something to be said for that making that information

close at hand in a society. Like, great, that's easier. And then for a female example the the suffix instead of vich or ovich it's avna or ovna and i picked female example born in the ussr in 1983 mila kunis the actress mila kunis her full for like full given name is melena markovna kunis that means her dad's name was mark kunis right right right um yeah and just like a such a i guess russian is so is interesting to an english speaker who doesn't know any russian because it just feels like an amalgamation of practices from languages i'm more familiar with it's like a little scandinavian a little this, a little that. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. I had no idea.

Vladimir Putin just stirring a big pot. Like, look what I put together. Yeah. Check it out. Yeah. Yeah. Or just like some some czar or some. That's more accurate. Yeah. Yeah. I guess what's the difference? Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience,

one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. One other interesting practice here that reminds me of it is Egyptian names, at least in the most traditional way. And shout out to patron Ryan Bracey for telling me about this. Apparently, and I couldn't find amazing sourcing on it, but the most traditional version of Egyptian names is somebody's given name and then their

father's first name and then their grandfather's first name before a surname. So it's sort of like an even more tears version of that. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like, makes sense. Like the longer your society is held together like and as long as these rules which don't work for everyone but as long as they're held to it's like it's like the you know what it is it's it's like some like this this is this is how my knowledge of history is is i'm about to say a thing because i'm like this is probably how they talk in game of thrones but also that's like based on European history, but it is like sort of like heraldic, like I am this son of this, this is my relationship with this. This is my,

you know, just, just like, it's like a little, a little CV in terms of like just who you are. Yeah. Really? Every time you give your, your full name. That's a great, it's,'s it's the don't you know who my father is which i guess has held weight throughout human history just a cave painting of megan mccain like see yeah that's been the most most important thing as far as time immemorial. That leads really well into this next number, actually. The next number is five.

And there's going to be a whole set of information, but five is a general number of types of origins for British surnames. Oh, okay. And one of them is the job thing that we talked about before. But with each society that has surnames, there was kind of a critical time usually when they started adopting surnames. And so there was this British window in the 1000s when they said, OK, now we need to like pick surnames for people based on not just who their father is because they didn't have one. need to like pick surnames for people based on not just who their father is because they didn't have one right right right yeah that's like but right i that's so like the interesting thing is like yeah and like just the fact that they're i mean i guess it's because you know even though it's a more or less coherent country now it's just five independent probably my guess is five

independent origins and it's a little regional of this practice and they just had different ways of doing it or was it five waves of like it's it's it's surname time you missed it last time you get one now i'd say there's like a few answers to that it's it's one time when people were doing five reasons and also there are definite regional variations for sure yeah right it just seems so bonkers to just be like we're doing we're doing family names we have five different ways five different ways you can pick presumably you can't pick presumably your lord picks for you. Potentially. Introduced for different reasons. Yeah.

And the, the source of these, like this schema, these categories for thinking about it is the book, the penguin dictionary of British surnames by John Tidford. And first one that we already mentioned is jobs. And that goes for a bunch of things. Like,

like you said, Cooper there's Baker butcher cook Mason, uh, and then Smith as a big one. Um, there's also like a few specifically weird ones in particular farmer, according to Titford, you would like, you would think farmer would almost be too common of a job name. Like so many people are that, that doesn't break it down any. Like in this time in the 1000s, the 10 hundreds, farmer, that word tended to refer to somebody who collected taxes,

as in they were like farming the money from the people under the snow woman. So surprise farmers. So this is like Starcraft logic is what you're saying. That's grim how language boomerangs all the way back around. Yeah. God, I want to play StarCraft now. Okay, focus.

aircraft now okay focus um and then the other like really strange one to talk about is any of the surnames that are a job in christian clergy like priest or abbot or like those people are generally especially before the reformation not supposed to be having children or families or anything um and so it turns out that name usually got applied to somebody who worked for that job as a servant. Like if you were the servant of a bishop, you could pick up the surname Bishop. Well, but then also realistically, a decent number of those people also did have the were sired by those folks, given the times. Yeah, exactly. That just folded into that surname. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably happened a lot. And so then there's four other categories here real quick. One of them is surname based on a first name, usually the father's first name. So we

talked about like Johnson is a common one. It also turns out a lot of surnames like Williams or Richards where you could break it out into like a first name with an S on the end. That also tends to be this situation. Right, right, right. It's like probably simply the possessive. Yeah, probably. Richard's son. Just the apostrophe fading over time. Yeah, yeah. And next category is surnames with a topographical origin and topography that's

landscape features or town features so like surnames like wood rivers bridge gates and also at ridge at well it's usually where somebody lives and they they pick up a surname that's distinctive about that so it just it is right like like ultimately i don't want to interrupt you before the end of the list but i'll just make a prediction but basically it's like if if like like the dumbest high school bully was just like the lord of your town which is probably the emotional equivalent and they're just like look at look at look at Woodsy over there. That's Woods. Almost precisely. Cooper's making barrels.

You're the Cooper. You know, it's just like it's arbitrary. And like they're just like low imagination folks. So they're just like these five things. But that's not bound to rules necessarily. That's like exactly right, because one of the two other categories here is just like nickname type stuff it's just like somebody got compared to a thing or or picked on for a thing because apparently a lot of animal last names such as wren or partridge it comes from you remind me of that animal is like the reason that's it yeah look at this partridge

yeah and then and then the other thing is like even like physical features like the surname Look at this partridge mother. Yeah. And then and then the other thing is like even like physical features like the surname short can because you're short. That can be. Yeah. Simple. Right, right, right. So it is like some like and we shall call you whatever. Yeah. Some did it is how you got your last name.

just some people some did it is how you got your last name and and also some of these are like hidden to us today because the british isles there were more languages than just english and so for example the scottish last name cameron apparently it comes from scott's gaelic and it's the scott's gaelic words for a twisted nose. Right. And then like Campbell is the same language for a crooked mouth. Like some, some names that we don't recognize as that are that quietly. Right, right. That, yeah, yeah. And it is simply transliterated to English to fit in. Like all kinds of **** through time.

And then last of the five categories here is place name origins so it's not like rivers and forests and stuff it's like the town's name the county's name right and titford says a lot of these are hard to identify today because this was more common in like smaller towns and smaller places like like if you give yourself the surname london because you live in london that's not distinctive that there's too many people right but there's like old towns and ghost towns that have become people's surnames right also it is just like you know in a time with yeah relatively if not no written record it's probably just a lot of like oh yeah i'm from Northampton. That's me. Don't worry about anything else I did prior to this.

And don't come looking for me by any other name. And the world was so rural, you could just be like, I'm from the woods. And everybody's like, yeah, cool. Makes sense. A lot of people are from the woods. Yeah, cool. Yeah. I'm not worried about it at all.

Cool. Yeah. A lot of people are from the woods. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I'm not worried about it at all. Cool.

Yeah. Well, there's one more number than one takeaway, but the last number here is 2.5 million. And 2.5 million, it's a low end estimate for the number of people in the United States with the surname Smith. Right. That's the number one surname in the US. And they think about that many. So, so Smith. Right. That's the number one surname in the U S and they think about that many. So, so weird. Yeah.

Like it's less than 1% of the population, but it's still a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, I guess that is the one place that America does kind of live up to. It's a, uh, melting pot reputation is like, yeah, you know, we may, we make people conform a little bit, but not that much. Yeah. There's a big range. And, and also with the rest of it, this stat comes from, it's,

it's a estimate from 2014. So there might be a few more now, but this was Mona Chalabi and Andrew Flowers at the website 538. They said they estimated 2.5 million Smiths. And then next most common is about 2 million johnsons and then the rest of the top 10 in the u.s was williams brown jones garcia rodriguez miller martinez and davis right that's top 10 and that list the yeah, those names are going to start moving in different directions as the United States hopefully continues to go at least a direction. But maybe not. You know, variability is only getting lower even though we have more people. And also, like, the roots of some of those are a little

surprising like smith smith is the biggest here mainly because it's the number one name in england and scotland but the number one surname in wales is apparently jones and that's part of why it's number five in the u.s like oh the welsh look at them right like they showed up yeah that's well and but then it's also like as as we're saying like the, you know, Smith, there's also the like statistically Smiths in the like Schmitz and then, you know, that. Yeah. That sort of thing. It's like, you know, it's probably extremely tedious and only mildly fruitful to do that math of like the origins. that math of like the origins but i'm guessing there's some version of also it's random like like smith smith is really you know just like like many divergent evolutions it's like it happens

that the first wave of immigration of english-speaking people was more weighted towards smiths through you know roll of the dice really. Right. Like, you know, it's who, fewer people, fewer Smiths died on the, on the boats or, you know, just randomly decided to come here cause they were religious freaks. And now we have this big zealot name, huge zealot. Yeah. Yeah. this big zealot name huge zealot yeah they're yeah yeah and uh and we will get to one takeaway and it's i think pretty relatively uplifting actually but there's one more wrinkle with these u.s last names that's very sad just heads up because the the other big element in u.s

surnames is the practice of human slavery from the British and then in the U.S. And it turns out that as of the census in the year 2000, 22% of people with the surname Smith identify as Black Americans. And some Black Americans, they got their surname from owners of ancestors applying it. And so that's a huge bummer. I feel like pretty significant numbers. It's like, yeah so that's a huge bummer i feel like pretty pretty significant numbers it's like yeah yeah that that's the the legacy of chattel not the jesus christ yeah hey yeah um yeah but yeah it it's it's one of those things that i feel like that doesn't ring honestly for enough white folks like because the number of times that you've seen people be like oh like to a black person we have

the same last name and then it's like without taking the x just a fraction of a step further of like what that how does that come about like. And it like doesn't apply to absolutely everybody, but it's a thing. And like, sure. No, no, of course.

Yeah. But, but like, even without that, like, yeah, like just so, just to,

just to take the whisper of a moment, like how do, how do you think other people's last names were acquired or certain names were acquired? Yeah. Yeah. It's usually kind of ugly and for like extra story about that i'll point people the past episode about the letter x because we talk about malcolm x's story and he and other people yeah just like dropping their surname because they noticed that element and you know yeah makes, makes sense. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was not that when you were like, it's a little sad. I was like, not that this is this makes sense either. But also, it feels like there's a big, you know, in societies where you're able to change your name. And it's like, you know, there had to be more Hitlers somewhere.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. There was and there's all kinds of reasons to change. Yeah. But one of the, one of the distant like bin Laden cousins, I remember trying to like launch a fashion line like sometime in the two thousands. And it was like, you know what? I understand this isn't really your fault, but, and honestly, maybe it was also, I don't know enough about this person, but it was like, you're, it's gotta be hard to sell a line of bin Laden couture for a while. It's going gonna be tough yeah yeah that even we won't really cover it but there's that whole thing of the current British royal family goes by the last name Windsor because they didn't like their previous German name because it just had German vibes and didn't fit the world right you know like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then it's like right so that's i guess the other thing for all the stuff we've been saying about how like as long as everyone follows the rules and it's like yeah don't so yeah forever people don't follow these rules so like it's not it's only marginally useful yeah yeah probably yeah and with especially name changes this brings us to

the one main takeaway for the main episode. Takeaway one out of one. It turns out the staff at Ellis Island rarely, if ever, changed the surnames of immigrants that came through there. Oh. It turns out, until researching this, I thought that was a thing that happened all the time. And it turns out that is a myth and for a few reasons. Right. that happen all the time and it turns out that is a myth and for a few reasons right i guess it is one of those things that's like there's there's two things one is i so many of those specific stories because also those are like you know stories of like immigration where people are like in higher than usual proportions running from something than like just your average population so like not all of them but in in a probably higher than baseline you know throw throw the

find a just completely random human being like ellis island feels like again higher than average like let's let's fudge the name a little bit. And, but that's incentivized from the, uh, from the immigrant side. So like rather than staff doing it, but then it's like a lot of like, yeah. And then the other side of it too, that strikes me as possible is like, you know, like that happens for whatever reason, but like, we only hear about, you know, the vast majority of people are just like, came in, here's my name, got written down, fine, here you go. But we probably, in our consciousness, over-index for, oh, my name was changed for X or Y quirky reason, because that's an anecdote. Everything else is just paperwork. Right.

And a lot of people either change their names before or after Ellis Island, like back in their home country or after they were here for a while, they had a reason assimilating or fleeing something or whatever but yeah yeah it turns out the actual facility didn't really do it and one of the biggest reasons people think it did is the movie the godfather part two right that is like the main example of this ever happening is young vito andalini from Corleone. I'll try to find it if I can link it for people. But there's a scene in that movie where it's like looking at Marlon Brando's future character, who is also Robert De Niro's character. But the kid is going through Ellis Island and a translator tells the official Vito Andolini from Corleone. And then the official lazily writes down Vito Corleone. And also the translator doesn't correct him.

And in this very fake scene, that happens. And it gave a lot of people the idea. It's not real. For the kids, it's like the scene in Solo where Han Solo gets his name. Have you seen that movie? It's real weird. Why did they do it? What? Yes, that's the other big example is star wars wow what's her name han are you alone yes han solo really we needed to see that that's wild yeah they borrowed it from a fake thing about the united states wow really cool like what a weird unnecessary

homage that makes so little sense i guess that's that's the beauty of star wars is it takes itself deadly seriously and then uses children's logic like every five minutes yeah because that's like what that's like a baby thinks like how you get named han solo you're alone so you're solo it's like how star wars is like how do wars work well the two coolest guys have swords and then yeah you know one fighter pilot is magic uh you know it's just it's just like yeah it has to be it has to be for babies The logic has to be for babies or it doesn't work. It's not like horrible trenches where guys have foot infections or something. Like, no, no, no.

Oh, man. That's not a bad. It's not a good pitch, yeah. Really unpleasant trench warfare battle. Just like kind of muddy i realized also i was playing the video game um jedi fallen order uh whereas it's the one where you play the jedi as a jedi but um you know you do a lot of deflecting laser beams and whatnot and i realized the jedi are not that great because that is a planet where the bullets, the main bullets that are shot at you move at about the speed of like a softball.

Sure. It's fast. You could definitely get hit by them and it would hurt a lot if you got hit by it. But also you can hit it. It's like doable to hit it. And those are the main weapons of war. we just can't make a faster bullet anyway time to go to warp speed easy no problem yeah that's the best we got yeah sorry a little tangent for for you there i can't believe solo did that thing it's amazing um

but but yeah that's like the only thing i remember from that movie there's a chance actually i didn't need it i had to check my disney plus there's a chance that is exactly where i turned off the movie because i don't remember anything subsequent to that so maybe i was just like you know what i need a little break and i never got back to that movie. We really didn't need that origin. They really went out of their way. Because with Ellis Island here, it turns out there are really like two big process reasons why this myth really, really didn't happen. It just was not a thing that like maybe one or two people out of millions had happened to. But it's like transcription typo levels. Yeah. not a thing that like, like maybe one or two people out of millions had happened to, but.

Yeah. But it's, it's like, like trend transcription typo levels. Yeah. And it turns out they didn't even really have the opportunity. One of the two big reasons is the broader white racism of American immigration. It turns out Ellis Island in its real time of being an immigration facility handled more than 12 million people. But they were all within pretty strict quotas of which country could send how many people to the United States. And so between that and the geography on the East Coast, basically all Ellis Island immigrants were from Europe. And from places that maybe there were a few Cyrillic alphabet people, but mostly Latin alphabet. And then they were white. So they, there was less transliteration or other errors like that.

Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Sorry. I didn't, I didn't mean typo. Is it, I guess I meant just like, like when so much was done by hand, like the error rate was not like ultimately millions of names that, that,

that bureaucratic error rate, like handwriting or error rate or typing, I guess, but you know. Well, and because the other other big reason is that Alice Island did not do that part. It turns out that when immigrants came from Europe, their names got recorded by the shipping lines before they got on the boat. So when they were still in their own country, and so especially the person recording they were still in their own country and so especially the person recording it was often from their same language and culture in their country if they were right so it's just like a card yeah yeah and yeah and then process wise like the migrant names get recorded before the boat comes the boat gives a manifest to ellis island inspectors

and they're just cross-checking that list and they and ellis island inspectors and they're just cross checking that list. And they, and Ellis Island inspectors also like, it turns out worked very hard. They did a 30 question examination. Part of it was creepy. It was like, they were supposed to check for rabble rousing. They were supposed to check for loafing. There was a lot of like not great class stuff, but all, all but measuring cranium size. Basically. Yeah. stuff but all all but measuring cranium size basically yeah but yeah but uh but also according

to historian philip sutton of the new york public library ellis island staff were actually more likely to catch a typo in the shipping line stuff oh sure because they'd be like is this right and the person would be like no and then they would fix it so So of the many things they did wrong or well, they didn't mess that up. Like specifically Ellis Island. Yeah. Had a different function. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And apparently also about in the peak years, about a third of the staff at Ellis Island were foreign born Americans. Also that staff, they were hired if they spoke about three languages was the average. And so when they were talking to people, like either they knew the language or they could tag in a coworker usually.

And so for what it was within the confines that were set up by Congress, it was like a pretty culturally solid institution. I guess, you know, what I will say is, yeah, the specific like island of Ellis Island, but it also is like, you know, even the way say is, yeah, the specific like island of Ellis Island. But it also is like, you know, even the way I used it before. It's like, yeah, it's more just like I feel like at least I use it. Ellis Island is like the whole process of like 19th and 20th century immigration. Sure. Yeah, sure. Like from from tip to tail, that is that is all called Ellis Island in my head.

Yeah, we we do refer to it that way broadly yeah for sure yeah i assume my dad did his san francisco i don't actually even know yeah and they uh they stopped running alice island as a main facility really in like the mid 1950s and right there and there were also you know anybody coming from the west or you know if people came across the southern border that used to be a lot more loose and and not restricted and so like yeah it's only one like pie slice of the uh immigration system yeah but yeah you're right it is probably the godfather is what made that the focal version of what immigration is like and called oh yeah it's so wild i had no idea yeah and and apparently the like other other source of this myth is some folks you know went through the immigration system and then changed their last name to assimilate and either consciously

or not consciously decided it was an easier story to say like, Oh, drop my culture. I didn't do it. Yeah. Again, it's just like referring to the whole system as Ellis Island. Yeah. Right. Like it makes sense in,

in those terms, but then it's, you know, not probably usefully, not accurately useful to talk about it in this conversation, but like you get it. Yeah. Sort of. of maybe i don't know now i want ellis island to be you know our term for the immigration system in the u.s

in space han solo yeah we all get it basically yeah yeah i mean he really that that is like he got ellis island there's no way on that set they weren't like okay we're shooting the ellis island scene that's like exactly what that is just like a weird bureaucracy gives you a name that's it that's what that is that's what that means like it or not like one really confused prop guy built a whole ocean liner like oh you don't want this but oh oh metaphor metaphor cool i'll take this back i'll take this back we can use this somewhere else so folks that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Andrew T. for just readily sharing so much about his own surname and its own history

and also being so fun for all the rest of the information in the show, too. And what an amazing thing to learn about my buddy. You know, the original character is D with a rising tone. Amazing. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the bizarre surname-based origins of the Smithsonian. You know, the museums and

magazine television channel, everything else. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than nine dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring surnames with us. Here's one more run through the stats, numbers, and big takeaway. Because this episode has an all-time humongous numbers section that let us break out the entire history of surnames globally, several different cultures' surname systems, the roots of British surnames, colonialism's role in where surnames have moved and gone, and more. And then, takeaway number one out of one, the staff at Ellis Island rarely, if ever, changed the surnames of immigrants to the United States. Those are the takeaway and stats and numbers. Also, please follow my guest.

He's great. Really grateful to Andrew T. Every time he is on this show, he's very busy. He's a wonderful TV writer. He's written for Mixed Dish on ABC, other shows before and other shows coming up. And then he makes many, many podcasts over at suboptimalpods.com. And you can follow their link or my link for the next live episode of the wonderful, amazing podcast, Yo! Is This Racist? Very funny, very sharp, and I think particularly exciting live. That is Saturday, September 10th. So the Saturday after this episode releases, if you hear it right away, that's at the Bell House in Brooklyn. The Bell House, amazing venue if you've never been. And also, the format of Yo Is This Racist, like the audience is going to participate in an episode of Yo Is This Racist,

that is going to be a lot of fun. And you meet your neighbors and stuff. Good stuff. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. I leaned on Reporting for CNN by Jesse Young, a book on Hispanic surnames by genealogist Lyman D. Platt, a book on British surnames by genealogist John Titford, and more material from the Smithsonian, the New York Public Library, Australia's SBS, Britain's BBC. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. Hope you love this week's bonus show.

And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.