Your last name may not be Smith, but with more than 45 million records for the name on Ancestry, you could find yourself related to someone (or someone’s) with the most popular surname in the United States and Great Britain. What could that mean to you? A lot.
Smith Surname Origins
The English surname Smith traces it roots back to Britain and a time when surnames often came from a person’s trade. Back then blacksmiths filled a vital function, making tools, armor, horseshoes, and other necessary items. The importance and pervasiveness of the occupation becomes clearer as you see how names meaning “Smith” grew into the most widespread among trade-inspired surnames in Europe.
So if you’re a Smith your ancestors were British, right? You couldn’t be more wrong. The meaning and background is just part of this name’s journey. Jumping from 274,919 Smiths in the 1850 census to 2,376,206 in the 2000 census, the surname in the United States goes beyond the trade and gives insight into how names were formed as people immigrated into the melting pot. As Americans and citizens of the world, we are rarely connected to just one country, and our ancestry origin stories are often much more complicated than we realize.
Smith Surname Around the World
The surname Smith isn’t confined to people with connections to Great Britain. People from other areas of Europe and Africa bear it, too. Slaves often took the last names of their former owners after the Civil War and had zero biological connections to the country where their last name came from. Others had their names “Americanized”; German Schmidts became Smiths, for example. Even some Irish immigrants with the Gaelic name MacGowan, meaning “son of the smith,” ended up having their last name translated as simply Smith.
By looking into records of your family’s past and creating a family tree, you can see that the meaning of your last name gives you only one sliver of understanding when it comes to your roots. Ancestry can give you a fuller understanding of how you, and your name, came to be and the hundreds of family connections that happened along the way. It allows you to see yourself as one part of a growing story that unfolds with every generation.
When it comes to surnames, Smith seems so simple and obvious. But no name is simple or obvious, and the journey of the original bearers and those who came after can hold stories more exciting than a bestselling novel. Ancestry gives you the resources to delve further into these tales and broaden your vision of, and acquaintance with, those who came before you.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free trial with Ancestry now and start uncovering the one-of-a-kind story that is your family. The country’s most common name proves that no story or ancestral journey is as easy as it seems.