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    Europa

    I cognomi più comuni relativi al lavoro in Europa.

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    2. Jeuungmlo on

      Sweden should rather be yellow. Bergman, which is sort of a type of miner, is the name of 14’202 people. While Möller, which is from the German surname, only is the name of 7’899 people. Regardless, neither is any common name.

    4. theologi on

      For Germany, “Schmidt” (= smith) is a pretty close second place to Müller. 3rd place goes to “Schneider” (= taylor).

      https://forebears.io/germany/surnames

      It would be more interesting to see in which countries the set of the 5 most common surnames is different from others.

      Also, “Gruber” isn’t an occupational name. It means “someone who lives in the valley” as opposed to “Berger”, “someone who lives on a mountain”.

    6. TywinDeVillena on

      Molina is a geographic name (Molina de Segura, Molina de Aragón), not occupational

    7. Tim-oBedlam on

      Does “Ferrari” literally mean “ironworker” or “blacksmith” (from the ferro- root meaning iron) in Italian?

      Interestingly, the surname Miller is much more common in the USA than it is in Britain, because a lot of the Millers in the US were Müllers or Möllers originally.

    10. fiendishrabbit on

      Note that occupational names are incredibly rare in Sweden compared to elsewhere (Möller is the most common occupational name, and there are less than 10 000 people are called möller).

      Swedish names tend to be:

      Noble: People who belonged to one of the noble families.

      Learned: It was typical for priests and learned to adopt a new name that reflected their learned status. The most famous would be the scientist Linneus.

      Borgeliga (Burgher names): From the 17th century an onwards burghers started to adopt family names in the style of the nobility.

      Martial names: Soldiers and sailors often adopted last names based on their service. Soldiers/sailors could be named after martial virtues, personal attributes or names based on location (typically one of a group of names that related to their regiment or the recruitment district).

      Patronymics: Historically most of Swedens population were distinguished from each other using patronymics. When, in late 19th century, it became obligatory to have a last name these names entered stasis. They pretty much all end in “-son” (son of).

      Gårdsnamn (place names. Usually a homestead*): In some areas you were named after the family homestead. This includes what might appear to be occupational names. So someone named Johan Smed (Smed is equivalent of Smith) might be named after Smedgården (Smith farm), because at some point in history they had a smithy on the homestead.

      Imported: Lots of historical immigration from Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark etc.

      *Hemman. A tax description of a rural property primarily used for agriculture. Ranging in scale from a small family farm to a major facility owned by an individual from the upper crust of free farmers where over a hundred people were housed on the property (which might not just be involved in farming but might have an attached smithy/quarry/mill/sawmill or other economic activity).

    13. Next_Cherry5135 on

      For Poland, Nowak is close second place (maybe even first now). It’s from “nowy” = “new”, like when someone new came to the village they could get that surname

      Edit: I just read what’s the graphic actually about, but I’ll keep the comment regardless, it’s cool trivia

    15. davidfliesplanes on

      Took me a while to understand what occupational meant. Thought it was about being occupied by another country.

    17. Necessary_Taro9012 on

      I had no fucking idea Kinnunen meant skinner.

      Best regards,

      A Finn.

    20. OrangeRadiohead on

      Murphy is not an occupational related surname. It means ‘sea fairer’/’sea warrior’ – a bit of a stretch to call these occupations.

    21. alalaladede on

      Since we are all correcting details, let me do the same for Greek:

      “Papadopoulos” is actually more of a patronymic name, meaning “son of the priest”. (Greek Orthodox priests do not need to follow the celibate, only bishops and monks do.)

      The proper occupational name would be “Pappas” which is quite a common name by itself, too.

    23. LazyZeus on

      Let’s be honest. Sea-warrior wins. It’s not even close…

    24. Tsuke35 on

      As a Finn I don’t understand Kinnunen being related to Skinner 🤨

    25. Character-Mix174 on

      Why are there so many people named Smith? Smiths weren’t nearly as dominant a demographic when peasants were given surnames in most of Europe. Did people lie about their profession just to be called Smith? Or were smiths so much better at having sex that they had significant more kids than other professions?

    27. Ventriloquist_Voice on

      “Finland, my man, what a gorgeous leather armchair you have, how you managed to make it so soft?”, -“Kuznetsov”

    28. FocusDKBoltBOLT on

      Lefebvre in France i highly doubt. I only know one.

      But this may be some regional thing but

      There is a lot of Martin Richard Petit Durand(t) etc etc

    29. Other_Class1906 on

      How is Gruber occupational..? Working in a mine? in a cesspit?

    31. Mysterious_End_2462 on

      It would be awesome to wear the family name Sea Warrior.

    32. FixLaudon on

      Austria is incorrect. Gruber is location-related and has nothing to do with mining. A “Grube” is simply a valley and as you can imagine there are quite a lot of them here since we have an awful lot of mountains.

    34. Wundawuzi on

      Gruber (Austria) has nothing to do with mining.

      It stems from digging, not mining, and it was not digging for ressources but digging to plant plants like wine.

    35. cucucool on

      I had no idea priest was a common type of name.
      I am in France and my name mean priest in a regional language.

    36. 18usernameslater on

      Shouldn’t Priest and Imam be combined? Surely it’s essentially the same occupation?

    38. Apollo_Wersten on

      Something died in me when I learned that Ferrari means blacksmith. This is simply not acceptable. Imagine “Team Smith” being the most famous F1 team. Founded by some Henry Smith.

    40. StuffClean on

      The Austrian surname Gruber comes from a resident who has his home in lower area (pit=Grube in german) in the landscape.

    42. grimgroth on

      I’m a native Spanish speaker and TIL that Molina comes from molino (mill)

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