tp168,
I have found that once you begin considering worldwide names, you
encounter issues with the local language and converting them to Roman
letters, such that the question of two letter surnames really becomes
invalid. Thus, I will limit my response to names listed in the United
States census, guaranteeing that all names are rendered correctly in
alphabetical letters.
101 two letter surnames are listed on the United States Census Bureau
site, located at http://www.census.gov . "Le" is the most common two
letter surname, ranking as the 975th most common of all United States
surnames. Here is complete list, in order of most common to least,
complete with the surname's frequency ranking amongst all surnames:
1) LE 975
2) HO 1275
3) YU 1734
4) WU 1789
5) LI 2084
6) LY 2102
7) NG 2332
8) VU 2686
9) DO 2934
10) YI 2990
11) LO 3049
12) LU 3207
13) VO 3234
14) MA 3375
15) OH 3508
16) HA 4447
17) SU 5897
18) HU 5956
19) TO 7508
20) KO 8126
21) TU 8233
22) SO 8527
23) KU 8560
24) TA 9181
25) FU 10080
26) IM 10213
27) XU 10540
28) HE 11061
29) AU 11417
30) LA 12802
31) NA 13205
32) JO 13489
33) DU 13538
34) GO 14315
35) UY 15029
36) YE 15290
37) MO 16063
38) AN 16653
39) RE 17177
40) HY 17724
41) EK 17788
42) SY 18425
43) RO 18479
44) DY 19214
45) IN 21503
46) GU 21554
47) UM 23328
48) RM 23445
49) JN 24576
50) NO 25272
51) OK 26209
52) OU 27293
53) SA 28394
54) RA 28459
55) ON 28542
56) EM 29054
57) TE 29556
58) MU 29923
59) MC 29994
60) EL 30474
61) DK 32125
62) JU 33557
63) BA 38645
64) SI 39223
65) PU 39524
66) KE 40329
67) SE 42159
68) PO 42478
69) ME 42879
70) TY 45060
71) NI 46101
72) MT 46176
73) CO 47909
74) YA 48596
75) VA 48887
76) IP 51231
77) BO 52785
78) PA 55092
79) AX 58674
80) VY 59285
81) US 59482
82) UR 59498
83) UK 59516
84) NY 61510
85) KY 62620
86) JI 63040
87) BI 65633
88) BE 65757
89) PY 68892
90) PI 69127
91) OR 69448
92) AR 75431
93) YO 75908
94) VE 76610
95) UC 76823
96) OZ 80178
97) OW 80186
98) KA 83220
99) EE 85563
100) AW 88280
101) AO 88459
To view the complete list of surnames, see
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.all.last (note that the
data on this site is several megabytes large, so it may take a long
time to download on a non-broadband connection)
Google search terms used:
surname most common |
Clarification of Answer by
hailstorm-ga
on
15 Oct 2002 23:00 PDT
tp168,
I will try to explain why this request becomes impossible to do on a
worldwide basis.
The vast majority of "official names" in the world are registered in a
language other than English. Some European languages have accented
letters, such as é, ÿ, æ, and others for which there is no universally
agreed upon way of rendering into one (or more) of the 26 English
alphabet characters. Other languages, such as Japanese, Chinese,
Indian, Hebrew, and others, are completely different from the English
language. While a phonetic conversion of these names is possible, it
is by no means an official rendering of the foreign name.
Without a standard method of converting all worldwide languages to
English letters, it is impossible to provide a valid answer to your
question for all citizens in the world. If this explanation does not
satisfy you, you may apply to repost this question or be refunded for
this question at https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=refundrequest
For a list of articles and discussion the difficulties in Romanizing
names, please see:
Japanese transcription (was Re: Patent searchers):
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.03.html#subj7
New Romanization system:
http://myhome.thrunet.com/~casiopaya/991206.html#<koreaherald1>
[KS] dropping McCune-Reischauer for 20th/21st c. personal names:
http://koreaweb.ws/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreaweb.ws/2001-December/003038.html
Romanization of Chinese:
http://www.npf.org.tw/PUBLICATION/NS/091/NS-C-091-334.htm
Reciprocity Schedule:
http://travel.state.gov/reciprocity/Country%20Folder/T/Taiwan.htm
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