Surnames

This should be a fun one for y’all.

A Torres met a Hernandez, and before you knew it, we were here—all 100 and some.

Now, there is a mix of last names throughout the family tree. Truth be told, not only do we have some of the most common last names of any in the country, we also have some of the most rare.

I recently came across a New York Times article that uses Census info to track surnames. It gives the frequency (occurrence for every 100,000 people), the rank, and the change in rank since the 1990 Census.

The article mentions one important concept. During the influx of immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many Europeans came to the US bearing their given family names. However, thanks to US policy, many of these immigrants had their names changed—‘Anglican-ized’ to sound more American. Thus, connections to history and culture were set aside in the name of immersion and assimilation in a glaring example of inherent American xenophobia.

As an aside, I have to mention that during this period, the rate of immigration per US citizen was at its highest compared to any era in American history. That is, there were more immigrants coming in to the US per thousand citizens than any other time—even more than now. The difference is that back then, you went to Ellis Island, got your papers stamped, and you were here as long as you wanted to stay. Now, they give us b_llsh_t about resources, security, crime, wages, taxes and the rest. But that’s another story.

So I took a look at some of the surnames from our family to see where our names fell and put them into a spreadsheet (see below).





By the looks of it, there are plenty of Garcia's and Hernandez', the Aspuria's need to have more kids, and judging by that jump in rank the Jaimes' must be having plenty of kids. Just kidding!

But it is interesting to see that the ones we can track above, the Anglo names are falling while the Spanish names are going up.

Here is the Times article where you can search names from 2000.

Here is another website where you can find info from 1990.

Good times... good times...