Surname statistics for Smith

There are approximately 747,967 people named Smith in the UK. That makes it the most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 11,838 are named Smith.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)7479671111838
United Kingdom (1881 census)42284511.41214119
Change since 1881+3251220-0.228-2281
Other Countries
United States2376206118808
Australia114997117035

Politics

People with the surname Smith are about as likely to be politicians as the average member of the population. When they do become politicians, they are most likely to be elected as Conservative.

As of the most recent set of elections, the political parties represented by politicians called Smith are:

  1. Conservative (102)
  2. Labour (86)
  3. Liberal Democrat (24)
  4. Independent (17)
  5. UKIP (5)
  6. SNP (4)
  7. Independent Forum (2)
  8. Green (1)
  9. Resident's Association (1)
  10. The Independents (1)
  11. Democratic Labour (1)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

David Smith
John Smith
Paul Smith
Michael Smith
Andrew Smith
Peter Smith
Robert Smith
Stephen Smith
Mark Smith
Richard Smith
James Smith
Ian Smith
Christopher Smith
Alan Smith
Martin Smith
Anthony Smith
Brian Smith
Graham Smith
Gary Smith
Colin Smith

Top female forenames

Susan Smith
Margaret Smith
Karen Smith
Sarah Smith
Helen Smith
Patricia Smith
Christine Smith
Julie Smith
Elizabeth Smith
Jane Smith
Linda Smith
Jacqueline Smith
Janet Smith
Alison Smith
Jennifer Smith
Nicola Smith
Catherine Smith
Gillian Smith
Angela Smith
Mary Smith

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.