‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Juliet (Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare)

What’s in a name? Despite Juliet’s protestations, quite a lot, actually. There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today talking about the most popular surnames in the United States that reveals how naming patterns demonstrate both the country’s increasing diversity and racial history. A few interesting facts:

• For the first time ever, there are 2 Latino surnames in the top 10. Garcia is the 8th most popular surname, and Rodriguez is number 9. Martinez almost made it into the list, coming in at number 11. This reflects the fact that the number of Latinos in the US grew by 58% in the 1990s.
• The top Asian name is Lee, which came in at number 22 (though there are also a lot of non-Asians with the last name Lee). Lee is apparently the most common surname in the world.
• About 1 in every 25 Americans is named Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis.
• Many blacks tend to have very traditional surnames, because many slaves adopted or retained the names of their former owners when they were emancipated. Nearly 90% of the Washingtons were black, as were 75% of the Jeffersons, 66% of the Bookers, 54% of the Banks and 53% of the Mosleys.
• There are 6.000.000 surnames in the US: 151,000 were shared by a hundred or more Americans, while 4.000.000 were held by only one person.

I wonder how many “nuroas” there are . . .