List of most common surnames in Europe

Ireland

The prevalence of some of these names is the result of more than one distinct Irish language names being represented by the same anglicised version.

Names starting with O' and Mac/Mc were originally patronymic. Of the names above, with the exception of Smith and Walsh, all originally began with O' or Mac/Mc but many have lost this prefix over time. Mac/Mc, meaning Son, and Ó, meaning Little (or Descendant), are used by sons born into the family. In the case of a daughter being born into the family she would use Ní/Nic, for example Ó Muireadhaigh becomes Ní Mhuireadhaigh. A woman who marries into the family and takes her husband's name uses Uí/Mic- e.g. Uí Mhuireadhaigh.[33][34]

Italy

From Mappa dei Cognomi website.[35]

Kosovo

These statistics are based on the Kosovo Agency of Statistics report on names and surnames in Kosovo, which took place in 2017.[38]

Latvia

Latvian surnames

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Out of 236,000 entries in the EDITUS phone book:

Malta

Moldova

Montenegro

Netherlands

The most recent complete count of surnames in the Netherlands is based on the September 2007 county registrations.

When closely related names are combined, the top 15 are:

* "vd" is an abbreviation which stands for all variants of "van de", "van den", or "van der"

Source: Nederlands Repertorium van Familienamen, Meertens-Instituut, 1963–2009. Data can be viewed in the Corpus of Family Names in the Netherlands See specifically De top 100 van de familienamen in Nederland (Dutch)

Names ending in -stra or -ma are usually of Frisian origin. For example, Terpstra, Bijlsma, Halsema.

Names ending in -ink or -ing are usually of Low Saxon origin. For example, Hiddink, Meyerink, Mentink.

North Macedonia

Norway

Poland

Polish names which end with -ski or -cki have both male and female forms – Kamiński/Kamińska, Wielicki/Wielicka, etc. This needs to be considered when taking a count by, for instance, scanning a telephone book. Historically, -ski, cognate with English -ish and French -esque, was a particle of nobility, like German von.

Portugal

The 50 most frequent surnames in Portugal are listed below.[48][49][50] A number of these surnames may be preceded by of/from (de, d') or of the/from the (do, da, dos, das) as in de Sousa, da Costa, d'Oliveira. Those elements are not part of the surname and are not considered in an alphabetical order.

Romania

Russia

See also: Список общерусских фамилий (in Russian Wikipedia)

The 20 most common widespread Russian surnames (for males) from the European part of Russia, as calculated by Balanovskaya et al. (2005):[52]

Those Russian surnames that end with -ov/-ev or -in/-yn are originally patronymic or metronymic possessive adjectivals with the meaning 'son of' or 'daughter/wife of' (the feminine is formed with the -a ending – Smirnova, Ivanova, etc.). In older documents such surnames were written with the word syn 'son', for example, Ivánov syn 'John's son' or Il'yín syn 'Elijah's son'; the last word was later dropped. Such names are roughly equivalent to the English or Welsh surnames Richardson or Richards.

The Russian equivalent of 'Smith', 'Jones', and 'Brown' (that is, the generic most often used surnames) are Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, or 'Johns', 'Peters', and 'Isidores', although Sidorov is now ranked only 66th.[52]

Serbia

Slovakia

Note: The most common surnames in Slovakia are a mixture of Indo-European and the Ugric roots reflecting the 900-year-long coexistence of the Indo-European Slovaks and speakers of other Indo-European languages with Ugric Hungarians and the Croatians, under Hungarian assimilation pressure throughout the 19th century (see Magyarization, see History of Slovakia). In 1910 Hungarians made up one-third of the population of the present-day territory of Slovakia.[56] Hungarians are currently an 8% minority[55] in Slovakia.[57] (see Demographics of Slovakia). While ethnic Hungarians are relatively few in Slovakia, their large presence on the list of most common names reflects the intra-lingual frequency of the frequent names in Hungary.

Slovenia

Spain

The top ten surnames cover about 20% of the population, with important geographical differences. The regional distribution of surnames within Spain was homogenized mostly through internal migrations, especially since 1950. Names typical of the old crown of Castile have become the most common all over the country. Most of the common Spanish patronymic surnames were introduced in Spain during the fifth to seventh centuries by the Visigoths.

Source:[59] – Data from December 1999. (2004 data confirmation of top 25)

Sweden

Source: World Family Names