Top 20 Most Popular Last Names by Length

Is your family name really long? Is it so long that it wouldn't fit on the back of a sport jersey? Or is your name so short people mistake it for your middle initials?

Here are 11 lists that show the 20 most common last names based on their length. There is a list for each length of name from two letters long all the way to twelve letters long or longer. In addition to these lists we present two bar graphs. One shows the count of unique names for each name length. The other shows the popularity of the names for each name length.


32% 24% 16% 8% 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+ Length of names 0.0% 0.2% 1.9% 8.3% 17.7% 22.3% 19.5% 13.8% 8.4% 4.2% 3.7%

Select the length in letters of the given name:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+
  1. HOLLINGSWORTH26899
  2. CHRISTIANSEN24990
  3. CHRISTIANSON17426
  4. HIGGINBOTHAM16642
  5. WESTMORELAND12421
  6. STUBBLEFIELD9895
  7. CHRISTOPHERSON7815
  8. WOJCIECHOWSKI6802
  9. KILLINGSWORTH5669
  10. EICHELBERGER5447
  1. FREDERICKSON5340
  2. BRECKENRIDGE5307
  3. STRINGFELLOW4903
  4. CARRASQUILLO4680
  5. KLEINSCHMIDT4420
  6. OSHAUGHNESSY4416
  7. KNICKERBOCKER4290
  8. HOLLINGSHEAD4128
  9. HETHERINGTON4123
  10. MIDDLEBROOKS4109

The table above shows the top 20 most popular names of the name of the particular length.

What can we conclude from these charts?

90% of the US population has a family name that is 8 letters long or shorter. 30% of the family names are 9 letters long or longer. How can this be? Many long names exist, but not as many people bear these long names.

What is the longest name?

At 18 letters long CHRISTODOULOPOULOS is the longest family name that we have in our dataset. It is also the name of Greek footballer (soccer player) Lazaros Christodoulopoulos. If you are wondering, his name does not fit on the back of his jersey. Instead, his jersey reads Lazaros.

We have omitted all compound names for the selection of the longest name, for example Garcia-Hernandez. These names tend to be subjective and limitless. Other names that are equally long and longer exist. But we have little data available for those names. So we cannot be sure that the names are valid or that they are name not a one-off spellings of ones that are generally compound-names.

Our research has found that there is at least one person with longer name. In December 2013, NPR news published an article about a Miss Keihanaikukauakahihulihe'ekahaunaele of Hawaii. At 36 characters long this name is twice as long as our longest. Unfortunately for us this family name does not appear in our dataset.