ALL you Smiths, Schmidts and Satos out there take heart. A common surname is not a reflection of a banal family history. The statistical likelihood that your surname is humdrum or interestingly obscure is governed by a set of simple rules that seem to apply regardless of a country’s culture or history.
Surnames come and go for a variety of reasons. Immigration brings in new names and some people decide it’s time for a new moniker. The British royal family, for example, famously switched names from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917, when it wasn’t popular in Britain to advertise your…
