why are some surnames rarer then others?mines foxworthy and i've never meet anyone else with the same name

Question

yeah you can use my name for your noval.whats it about?

Answer 1

OMG.... Can I use your surname for the novel I plan to write????? PLEAZZZZ

Answer 2

Foxworthy
English (Devon): habitational name from a place in Devon named Foxworthy, probably from an Old English personal name Færoc + Old English worðig ‘enclosure’.

I'm from the United States and Foxworthy does not make the 1,000 most common names in America list. It seems relatively scarce here. According to a 1920 Census distrutribution, the greatest numbers of Foxworthys lived in the state of Indiana.

Answer 3

It looks like you are finally getting some decent answers.

People started using surnames back in the middle ages, when villages got so crowded that just referring to someone as "Bruce" wasn't enough to identify him. So, if he was a smith, they would say "Bruce the Smith", which became "Bruce Smith".

99% of the people were farmers back then, so they wouldn't say "Bruce the Farmer"; that would be like saying "the one with black hair" if you were trying to describe one person in a crowd of Chinese people. "Farmer" is a rare surname, compared to "Smith" and "Miller".

They might also call him "Bruce, Robert's son", which is how we get the surname "Robertson" and "Roberts".

"Bruce who lives on the hill" gives us the surname Hill.

"Bruce with the strong arms" gives us the surname Armstrong.

The more people that shared a trait, the more common a surname. When non-English people came to the US, they would sometimes change their names (or have it changed) to fit the English spelling. "Schmidt" became "Smith" and "Zimmerman" became "Carpenter".

According to the US Census,

http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/names_files.html

these are the 10 most common surnames in the US in 1990:

Name Frequency
---------- ---------
SMITH 1.006
JOHNSON 0.810
WILLIAMS 0.699
JONES 0.621
BROWN 0.621
DAVIS 0.480
MILLER 0.424
WILSON 0.339
MOORE 0.312
TAYLOR 0.311

They don't line up in this font. That "Frequency" means that out of every 1,000 people, 100 will be a Smith, 81 will be a Johnson, 70 will be a Williams, and so forth.

Taylor and Miller were popular occupations, it seems. There are more "Johnson" than "Poindexterson" because "John" is more popular that "Poindexter" as a given name.

http://find.person.superpages.com/
gave me 300 people named "Foxworthy" in the US. There are lots more; it stops at 300. You can look for Forxworthys in your state or near your city, if you like.

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/search_census.asp
has pages of Foxworthys living in the US, UK and Canada in 1880/1881.

http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi
has 1,519 people named "Living Foxworthy". It uses "Living" as a given name for living people to preserve their privacy.

Lastly, one of the warmest, funniest comedians around is Jeff Foxworthy. He's much more than a redneck. I enjoy him, and I drink fine wines and listen to classical music.

Answer 4

some names are liked more than others some create new names,some are insulting or humiliative so alot of people dont use those names as commonly but foxworthy?i dont see a bad joke about it but yu might be a red neck:D

Answer 5

I am BHARAT BHAGAT.

The first name is given considering the zodiac sign at time of birth, according to the Hindu calender, The letters B, D, T wre available, parents named me after the son of saint RAMA.

The second name, ie the surname is the family name, that goes on for generations.

Spealt in vernacular, English or any srcipt, the name & surname
have only 1 LETTER difference.


hOWZZAT?

Answer 6

names come from history and have a meaning behind them, smith for example means that way back in time your ancestors were some sort of smith, blacksmith, or something, Taylor means they were tailors, I'm not sure where yours comes from but some people throughout history have changed them renamed themselves and joined two names together so I'm guessing that if you followed your name back you may find it started out as fox or something and that could have been because they caught foxes or were farmers and then the worthy part was added at a later date either though marriage or because someone decided they wanted a new name for their family to move them further from the rest of their family.

Answer 7

I guess the most common surnames are job names e.g. Smith, Wright, Fisher, Clark, Miller and the like, and patronymic names such as Johnson, Davidson, and placenames and colours e.g. Leslie,Green, Brown. Having a rare surname just means your family is less common than average. Take it as an obvious sign that you are not a schemie/chav/ned peasant.

Answer 8

Because some people had more sons than others, who may have had mostly daughters or didn't have many children at all! It used to be a big deal (even 20 years ago) that a man wanted to have a son "to pass along his name".

Nowadays with so many babies being born to unmarried mothers they aren't passing along their father's names, either.

Answer 9

There's an American comedian with that name...Jeff Foxworthy

Answer 10

Just put a quick search into ancestry.co.uk for you & it looks like a name from the west country, (Cornwall & Devon) and Scotland.

Answer 11

Because most people share the same IQ and they can't think of something more original.

I have the highest IQ of my kind: 13. Uh-huh!! In yo feyz!!