I don’t mean a direct translation, but rather a common and/or “stereotypical” last name that is generally used as the equivalent of “Smith” in English.
Nguyễn - Vietnam
Pronounced “win” with a slight N sound before, for anyone else wondering
Add the “Long” to that Nguyễn and you have the John Smith of Vietnam
Tremblay - Québec, Canada
On a tangent, Paul Tremblay the author had one of the most disappointing collections of short stories after a few excellent novels. It was so bad I couldn’t finish it.
Don’t forget hyphenated last names. The number of “long last name - another long last name” Quebec names I’ve seen is astounding.
I think its a thing where the default is to combine names instead of the wife assuming the husband’s name. Not sure if its true but a French person told me so I’ve been running with that. Seems like a dangerous game where last names grow in size exponentially. Then one day they have to reset to one name, but everyone gets to pick their own name again.
chuckles in Tremblay-Laroche-Gagnon-Roy-Bouchard-Fortin
première fois, mon ami?
“sigh No, I’m Terence Shrewsbury-McEllen-Smith-Harper-Thomas-Capote. You’re looking for Terence Shrewsbury-McEllen-Harper-Thomas-Capote-Smith.”
“No, we’re not related.”
иванов/иванова (ivanov/a) is common, кузнецов/а (kuznetsov/a) is “smith”
Иван Иванович Иванов весь день ходит без штанов. Иванов Иван Иванович надевает штаны на ночь.
Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov goes without pants all day. Ivanov Ivan Ivanovich puts on his pants at night.
Silva - Brasil
In Portugal too
Ferrari - Italian
Andersson - Swedish
Andersson - Swedish
I would say it is a tie between Andersson and Svensson.
Kim for Korea
I’m from neither China nor India, but I’d wager Wang and Singh respectively. I’d also wager Garcia for Spain, Ivanov for Russia, and Müller for Germany.
If say it’s Campbell or maybe Wilson in my country (Northern Ireland).
In Italy, it is Rossi. Mario Rossi is the most common first name/last name combination.
In Russia, Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. I don’t know why they love so much Johannes from the Bible.
Smith. Also Murphy.
Literally it would be Kowalski, which is stereotypical common surname. Another common one is Nowak (meaning newguy vaguely).
Иванов или Кузнецов - русский
Smit (Smith) of De Jong (Nederlands)
García (español) o Herrero
Wales has to be Jones.
Janssens and Peeters in Belgium (Flemish region)
Janssen or Jansen (without that final s) is also the default last name in the Netherlands
In the north you find a lot of de Vries (the… frosty? There’s an origin story involving Napoleon that I don’t know whether it’s correct)
Regarding Peeters, a crush of mine was called Peters, in Dutch Limburg. Besides that I don’t know the name so I’d guess it’s uncommon here
No way it’s Popa in Romania. Popescu is an insanely common name, by far the most common I’ve heard.
Sikh’s have a mandate to use certain last names but im not sure how much its followed.
Singh and Kaur for males and females, respectively, if I understand right.
