What it’s like to have the most popular surname in the country

Yeah it’s Smith


Our names hold our identity and are a crucial part to who we are and who we will become. It represents our parents and their parents and their parents and their parents and so on.

It builds the foundations to our school career and marks us for the rest of our lives. We all know people who are known by nothing but their last name and even the mere mention of their first name goes unnoticed and doesn’t even seem real.

Everybody knows a Smith. There is Will Smith, a Sam Smith, even an apple names after our grandma. In England and Wales, 1.15 per cent of people have the same surname as me. We are literally everywhere, there is no escaping us.

The name is synonymous with one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all times. In an interview Morrissey said he chose it because “it was the most ordinary name”, unpretentious and unassuming. They didn’t need a fancy name, they let their music do the talking. Us Smith’s refuse to be objectified by our names, we are more than a boring title and we will not be forgotten about.

However, having such a popular name does have its issues.

Choosing an email address/ any form of social media is hell

Our surname immediately excludes us from any type of user name in which ‘Smith’ is used. Even the doubling up of letters has become an issue because it is guaranteed that someone with your surname has already nabbed the ‘Smithh’ or ‘Smiith’. We have to result to quirky nicknames when all we want is a bog standard username.

There’s is even a website dedicated solely for lost Smiths just trying to make a name for themselves on social media.

There are literally millions of us.

We can’t even pretend to be different

No one ever asks us where we are from or if our name Spanish, German or even Russian.

Pretty much what you see is what you get. It’s not that we want to be asked about our heritage, but it would be nice to be asked just the once.

Guess what the captain of the Titanic’s surname was….

Edward John Smith was his name.

You’ll never be able to Google yourself

I’ve come to accept this. No matter how bland or unusual your first name is, if your surname is Smith then several famous people have all been there first.

The struggle of a nickname

Unfortunately, our ready-made perfect nickname (thanks to the iconic Gavin and Stacey character) ‘Smithy’ is just a complete write-off.

You can’t have three Smithy’s on a football team, it just wouldn’t work. We’ve kind of stabbed ourselves in the foot with this one, limiting ourselves to our imaginative friends to come up with something witty revolving around our first name.

Unfair policy of Betfair

You are unable to refer a customer with the same surnames as yourself. So to all the avid Smith betters out there you’re a bit screwed if you were up for trying to earn money making codes.

Ever tried making a reservation?

A huge daily struggle we all face. You can always hear the disappointment on the other end of the telephone when a restaurant asks for your surname and you reply with Smith. They’ve already got five Smiths booked for 9pm so time to move onto the first name, wasting both your precious time.

We can’t date another of our kind

With all the surnames in the world to choose from I think it would be a highly irresponsible choice to marry another Smith.

Surely marriage is your stepping stone into the next chapter of your life and you don’t necessarily want to take the baggage you earned as a previous Smith with you. Although Mr and Mrs Smith does have a nice ring to it.