By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-10-15 14:27:04 | Updated at 2026-10-16 09:02:17
1 day ago
The latest UK government birth statistics and long term trends show Smith won’t be the most common surname in England and Wales for the first time in a millennia by next year, analysis claims.
The surname Smith will be shown to have replaced by Khan as the most common family name for new-born babies in England and Wales in 2027, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph states. The claim is based on the latest live births name data published by the Office for National Statistics this week, which lists every non-unique surname in England and Wales annually going back to the 1990s.
The report notes the long trend of decline in English surnames and the surge in births to migrant-origin mothers, and that Smith was already just a few hundred births away from being overtaken by Khan in the 2026 data release, which covers births that took place in 2025. Last year, 4,100 babies were born to Smith families, while 3,700 Khan family babies were born in England and Wales.
The report notes that in 1996, every surname in the top-ten most common for births was of British origin, yet today just three of the top ten are British.
The top ten most common surnames for new-borns in the latest statistics are in descending order; Smith, Khan, Ahmed, Ali, Jones, Hussain, Singh, Williams, Patel. and Kaur.
Historic protection charity English Heritage, which was spun out of the UK Government’s old Ministry of Works notes hereditary surnames are only a comparatively recent development in European history and became really widespread in Britain only in the 14th century. Surnames seem to have emerged in the decades and centuries following the Norman conquest as being able to identify individuals across the whole country and not just by forename alone was important for levying taxes.
Smith, which is now set to be overtaken by a migration period surname, is thought to have been the most common surname for this whole time since the emergence of surnames. It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, referring to one who works with metal.
Other surnames in England with the same meaning but from different languages survive, including Farage from the Norman farrier, and Gove from the Gaelic gobha.
The unmistakable change in baby names revealed through government statistics and unveiling the rate of demographic change pushed by soaring immigration and the average fertility differential between new arrivals and legacy families has been clear for many years. Breitbart News reported how Muhammad as a chosen first name for newborn babies had come to dominate in multicultural London over a decade ago, and then later became the most popular baby name in England and Wales altogether.
This isn’t exclusive to Britain. Muhammed has become a top baby name in France, Germany, and Austria too.
