The most common names in the county
THE most common surnames in England have been broken down by county - and it certainly makes for interesting reading.
English surnames can be split into seven types: Occupational; a personal characteristic; a place name; of a family estate; patrynomic or ancestral; or honouring a patron.
It is widely recognised that names in the UK correspond to the nations, particularly patrynomic or ‘clan’ names - McDonald is Scottish, O’Neill is Irish, Jones is Welsh and Richardson is English, but what can Warwickshire claim as its typical surname?
Lifestyle website Sofeminine compiled a list of the most common surnames in each county, and here are the 50 most common in our county.
Topping the tree is Wood, a name common across the anglosphere, originating from people who lived and worked in the woods.
It could also be a characteristic name as ‘wood’ in middle English meant wild or crazy. Smith and its variants in other languages - Schmidt, Ferrari, Lefeuvre/ Faure, Gove, form the most common surname group in the world.
The most common names in Warwickshire 1. Wood 11 130 2. Matthams 9 646 3. Smith 7 751 4. Brown 5 502 5. Davies 5 440 6. Jones 5 204 7. Roberts 4 850 8. Clarke 4 847 9. Harrison 4 842 10. Bray 4 781 11. McKenna 3 305 12. Whelan 3 288 13. Bowcott 3 287 14. Langford 3 282 15. Murphy 3 280 16. Jackson 3 275 17. Aitken 3 263 18. Mills 3 257 19. Osborne 3 243 20. Wyatt 3 231 21. Moffat 3 225 22. Brine 3 222 23. Griffin 3 216 24. Bickley 3 215 25. Ward 3 207 26. Edwards 3 200 27. Reeves 3 200 28. Fuller 3 198 29. Miles 3 195 30. Butler 3 184 31. Mcgrath 3 181 32. Corrigan 3 179 33. Walters 3 170 34. Williams 1 911 35. Burton 1 743 36. Townsend 1 741 37. Bartlett 1 739 38. Benham 1 735 39. Hall 1 734 40. Alder 1 733 41. Makepeace 1 733 42. Randle 1 732 43. Reid 1 732 44. Longden 1 730 45. Burnett 1 730 46. Compton 1 730 47. Lloyd 1 728 48. Tuckey 1 728 49. Sanders 1 727 50. Weston 1 725 50. Barnes 1 725 The 20 most common surnames in the UK 1. Smith 2. Jones 3. Taylor 4. Williams 5. Brown 6. Davies 7. Evans 8. Wilson 9. Thomas 10. Roberts 11. Johnson 12. Lewis 13. Walker 14. Robinson 15. Wood 16. Thompson 17. White 18. Watson 19. Jackson 20. Wright