I’m Irish. I find that when meeting someone new here, I can usually tell where they/their family are from because of their surname.
I think the average person here could narrow down the country (of more common immigrant groups), and the regions of others. Eg. You might know a name is Eastern European, but not the specific country.
I was wondering because America has such a historic mix of ethnicities, I assume it must be harder to tell.
How often can you tell where a name comes from?
Is it easier to tell with recent immigrants, or does it depend on how large a community is (like I imagine Italian or Irish surnames might be easier to spot)
And I know some parts of America are known for being settled by a specific nationality, but can you notice in your community what origin(s) of names are more common?
I’m also curious because iirc when slavery ended, most black Americans chose surnames, so would you be able to tell if a family immigrated post-slavery because of their names?
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We’re an immigrant country. Only about 2-3% of the population is Native American and actually”from” here. So it’s usually nearly impossible to tell if Mr. Rodriguez is from Mexico, or if Ms. Boucher is from France or if they are American and just have French/Mexican ancestors. At least not from just knowing surname alone.
If it is Western European, fairly often. However, Latin American and Slavic countries have a handful of names that make up about 70% of last names divided among hundreds of millions of people in dozens of countries.
Good luck guessing where Jose Rodriguez is from.
Depends on the surname. Some I’m aware of the cultural history behind them. Some are a bit more ambiguous. There are also a lot of cases of people adopting a surname that comes from a different ethnicity than their own, which adds confusion.
I actually don’t even know the origin of my own surname. It’s a bit of a rare one and while the stories that are passed down in my family describe it as Polish I’ve noticed that from a linguistic standpoint it could be German. My paternal lineage is Ashkenazi, so there was a good chance they were transient in Europe for a while before entering the US. I don’t have access to clear records on that branch of my family past my great-grandfather due to all of the records being in Europe (if they even survived WWII).
I’m a teacher (college professor) so have had thousands of student names to learn over the past 25+ years. Most of the time I recognize the origins of surnames, at least to a geographical area, though that’s harder for me as I have more students who have immigrated recently from Africa, south Asia, and the Pacific Islands as those regions were less common among my students. But it’s generally impossible to connect the cultural origin of a name with a person’s actual heritage in the US– there is so much intermarriage, so many names lost at points of immigration, so many lost to the legacy of slavery, so many people who simply decided to change their names, etc. that you simply can’t assume with much faith that a Schmidt is of German heritage or a Takahashi is Japanese or a Svenson is Swedish.
Last names here might give you a general idea of region of the world that person’s family is from, but in a vague sense (e.g. British, French, Spanish, Eastern European, African, Latin American, Asian, etc) but not down to the country, unless you have a lot of familiarity with the relevant culture (most Americans don’t).
It won’t tell you ethnicity or racial identity, because that stuff is very complicated here and a lot of people are a mix of so many things and marry into last names from different places all the time.
Last names here also won’t tell you if they’re recent immigrants or not, except for African Americans. African Americans that are descended from slaves and whose families have been here for ages, usually have European (mostly British) last names, but that’s also a bit of a generalization (because of the marrying into last names of different nationalities thing). People recently immigrated from African countries, who still have African surnames, stand out from generational African Americans for that reason. But like I said, it’s more of a generalization than a rule.
My grandfather came from a country that was colonized. My continental European name isn’t from a European grandfather.
In a sort of hand waving sense you can make a good guess. Vaguely Hispanic, probably Irish, maybe Polish, probably German, potentially Italian, etc.
But with the huge mix of people here even if your surname is clearly Greek you may still be mostly Irish.
My surname is clearly German but that hides the Swiss, (possibly) French, Slovak, Irish, English, and my wife’s Norwegian, English, French, and Belgian (maybe).
At least one of my family surnames is definitively Swiss to the point they are named after a small valley where they probably farmed for hundreds of years.
My own surname is German in the sense of it’s a German name for an occupation that a shit ton of people have. And often Jewish people think I have Jewish ancestry, but as far as we know we don’t.
As far as black surnames post slavery they can be chosen or they can be the name of their slave owner’s family or gained by marrying into other families. Impossible to say without doing some actual genealogy.
Rarely. There are some names with a pretty clear origin, but even then who knows how closely that actually corresponds to that person’s origins and cultural affiliations?
I have one coworker who has a weird fixation on where people “are from”. Often to the point that he says things that are really rude. He’s constantly asking one other coworker who’s ethnically Japanese to explain Japanese things even though said coworker repeatedly points out that he’s 5th generation American, doesn’t speak Japanese, and doesn’t really know more about Japan than anyone else who’s been there on a vacation once or twice.
He’s decided I’m Irish based on my surname. I got the name from ancestors who left Ireland and immigrated to North America in the 1600s. My ancestry is from many different places but all centuries ago; I’m just American. Not Irish. But he’s a weirdo.
Pretty often except not always with black Americans (descendants of slaves). Prime example: Shaquille O’Neal lol. I’m black with an Arabic last name that I’m not sure where it comes from.
East Asian names help me determine ethnicity. I’m from Pennsylvania and we have so many PA Dutch/German names. If someone has an Irish name I can determine what part of the state they’re from depending on their accent.
Probably 50% of the time I know the origin of the surname (or at least when I see it). I am pretty good at knowing when a surname is a different spelling than the original or a made up name (illiterate folks sometimes ended up with a phonetically spelled name or a shortened one).
Also: Johnson (Swedish or English), Miller (English or German-anglicized), etc.
Russo/Italian vs Rousseau/French
A lot of immigrants were given more English/German last name when they arrived.
Pretty often, especially if European. Being from New York and living in New York Metro my whole life I have many friends and acquaintances who are immigrants from, or descended from many different countries.
For “old settler” Americans especially, the last name is nearly useless for actual ethnicity, since we are so blended. But I can recognize the origin of a fair amount of names from the most common immigrant cultures, which makes it perhaps 80% of the time. Except those Spanish surnames– they could be from anywhere between Spain and the Phillippines.
Sometimes I can get the country but more often I just guess the general region like “Eastern Europe” or “British Isles” or a language. Some surnames have attributes that telegraph their origin like O’,Fitz, or Mc/Mac on the front or small word in the middle such as von or van or at the end some have modifiers like ski/ska that basically say son or daughter of the previous part of the name. If there’s special punctuation that can be helpful. I don’t know anything about African names and I mix a lot of Romance language names together. Some common Jewish names stand out like Levinson, Goldman, or Cohen.
Most of the time.
Along with the other good answers given here, there’s also the fact that a person’s last name might only reflect a small percentage of a person’s ancestry. My own last name comes from my dad’s, dad’s dad. But his branch of my family tree is the only one from one county. The other 7/8 are all from various other ones.
90 percent of the time. I’m a language guy and international traveller so usually I’m able to pick out accents and names very well
This is my “giant jiggly dildo of a human being” complaint with my Asian wife and her Asian friends when they get mad about people not knowing which Asian country they came from. Oh don’t you know what European country and which region of that country my family comes from based on my surname.
I’m a bit of a name/etymology nerd so I can usually tell, I doubt that’s something a lot of Americans pay attention to though.
My last name is Swedish, dad is from Minnesota, having Swedish ancestry isn’t unique in MN, if you look up Scandinavian surnames in the U.S., they’ll be focused in the Midwest. Where, I grew up in NY, Swedish surnames aren’t very common at all. I see a lot of Italian, Irish, and Eastern European names.
On top of that, like someone said your surname isn’t necessarily indictive of cultural or ethnic identity to an American. I obviously have Swedish ancestors, but that’s just from one grandparent- that was only half Swedish.
My last name is Scottish and the vast majority of people assume that it’s Irish. As an Irish person, you would immediately identify it as Scottish.
It’s not a generic name like Smith or Brown. It’s the name of a clan fer chrissake.