These Are Iowa’s Most Common Last Names–Is Yours One?

A lot of people in the radio business go by "stage names". They do it because they either think their real name isn't cool enough, or because they don't want to be stalked. I have no delusions about the latter, and I might be biased, but you can't really go wrong with a name like Eric Stone. It's a real solid (see what I did there?) name, whether pronouncing it, writing it, or screaming it in adoration.  At least, that's what I've been told.

In my case, it also reminds people of the object they most often want to throw at me.

Particularly when it comes to the last name, though, it's not terribly common, but more so than I would like. Before we get to "Stone"'s place in the American surname lexicon, let's look at the more common names.

According to Ancestry.com, the Top 6 most common last names in the United States are:

• Smith
• Johnson
• Miller
• Jones
• Williams
• Anderson

When Ancestry took a look at the midwest states, there was little deviation from the above names. They checked out the Top 3 from each state and here in Iowa, we have an abundance of Smiths, Williams, and Andersons for sure.

All in all, Stone is the 178th most popular last name. This is actually down from the year 2000 when it ranked #162. There are approximately 153,329 "Stones" in the country.

We could spend even more time getting into nicknames: Stoney, Stoner (no comment), Stoneman, Stonetastic (also my Twitter handle), and Stonemeister.

Smiths are a dime a dozen, or in this case over 2 million, as the #1 most common surname according to this data. Not bad!

Namecensus took the liberty of ranking the Top 5000 most common last names in the country and you can see that list and where you rank here.