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North America

American Names

American names typically follow given name, optional middle name, family name order -- but there's no single dominant historical naming system behind them. The country's own most common surnames reflect an unusually wide mix of immigrant naming traditions layered on top of each other.

Analyze full name ↓ Common Names

Common names in the United States

The given and family names Foundry sees most often for the United States, each shown with its share of what Foundry has learned — not an official statistic, just what the engine's own data reflects.

Given names

  1. Jose 0.98%
  2. Maria 0.86%
  3. David 0.83%
  4. Michael 0.77%
  5. John 0.76%
  6. Juan 0.62%
  7. Carlos 0.53%
  8. Luis 0.52%
  9. Daniel 0.51%
  10. Chris 0.5%

Family names

  1. Garcia 0.96%
  2. Hernandez 0.9%
  3. Lopez 0.87%
  4. Rodriguez 0.87%
  5. Martinez 0.85%
  6. Gonzalez 0.7%
  7. Smith 0.68%
  8. Perez 0.65%
  9. Johnson 0.53%
  10. Sanchez 0.51%

Naming conventions in United States

Order

Given name(s), optional middle name, family name -- no particle or patronymic system built into the base convention, though imported surnames often carry their own.

Inheritance

The family name is inherited. Historically a wife took her husband's name automatically; today it's a personal choice, varying state by state, with no nationwide default.

Particles

Not a native convention -- but the country's top surnames show which imported particle/suffix systems are most represented, since the US is a naming-system melting pot rather than having one of its own.

Common affixes & particles

ElementMeaning
-ez Spanish patronymic "son of" -- Hernandez, Rodriguez, Martinez, Gonzalez, Perez, Sanchez
Garcia / Lopez Spanish surnames from the same patronymic-naming era, without the "-ez" suffix
Mc- / O'- Irish/Scottish "son of" / "descendant of" -- McDonald, O'Brien
-son English/Scandinavian "son of" -- Johnson, Anderson
Smith English occupational surname (blacksmith) -- historically the country's most common single surname
-er (anglicized) German occupational surnames, sometimes anglicized in spelling -- Miller, Meyer, Schneider/Snyder

Gender & grammar

American family names do not change with gender -- the same spelling is used for men and women. A married-name change is a personal and legal choice, not a grammatical requirement.

7 of the 10 most common family names in Foundry's US submission data end in the Spanish patronymic suffix "-ez": Hernandez, Lopez, Rodriguez, Martinez, Gonzalez, Perez, and Sanchez.

That reflects the country's actual population mix rather than a single "American" naming tradition -- Hispanic and Latino surnames are heavily represented in everyday name submissions, alongside historically English surnames like Smith and Johnson. The absence of one dominant pattern is itself the more interesting structural fact about US names, compared to Germany or Russia.

Analyze name from the United States

Split full names from the United States into given name, family name, titles, and particles — calibrated confidence instead of a single guess, powered by Foundry.

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This page is one view onto Foundry's Name Intelligence engine, fixed to the United States context. For the full feature list, how it works, and other countries, see Name Intelligence.

FAQ

What's the most common naming order in the US?

Given name, optional middle name, family name -- with no built-in particle or patronymic system, unlike many other countries.

Why do so many common US surnames look Spanish?

US name-frequency data reflects the country's actual population mix, not one historical naming convention -- Hispanic/Latino surnames, many carrying the Spanish patronymic suffix "-ez", are broadly represented alongside English, Irish, German, and other immigrant-origin surnames.

Do American women change their surname when they marry?

It's optional and varies by personal choice -- some take their spouse's name, some hyphenate, some keep their own. There's no nationwide legal default, unlike the automatic gendered suffix in Russian naming.

Other countries in North America

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