Last Names by Country of Origin

Very easy

I was going to reply ironically saying "Wow, you must be sooooo clever" but then I realised I shouldn't picking on comments more than 10 years old LOL

Well, you did it anyway

Cool quiz. I'm not too upset about not getting Armenia. Something tells me you'd actually have to watch that show to know the answer to that question.

I don't think it's really about the TV show, or the Kardashian family themselves. Maybe your area simply doesn't have a large Armenian population, but I thought it was common knowledge that names that end with -ian were Armenian.

LOL :)

Brian, what means "Brian" (I hope this is the correct original version, I know Monty Python only in the German translation)

Cher's orginal last name is Sarkisian.

Scuadrado, that's why i thought kardashian was persian, because the ppl i know that end with ian are persian jews.

So, what if you are Ian?

PaterN, the English quote is "Brian that is called Brian".

I got it first try because of System Of A Down surnames, Tankian, Oblanian, Malakian...

and Charles Aznavour was originally Aznavourian

Pretty much all Armenian names end in "-ian" or "-yan", and occasionally "-jan".

But not all names that end with "ian" belong to Armenians or their descendants. As an example, the Nazi tank commander Heinz Gurderian's name probably represents a contraction or corruption of "Guderjan" (Guter Jan), which means something like "Good Jan." Or so says one contributor to his Wikipedia page; another offers a fanciful theory about the Armenians somehow playing a role in Baltic commerce, which is how a Prussian would end up with that name. The lesson: be careful not to overgeneralize. As one wit once put it "All generalizations are false."

never seen the show and I got it, but, I really don't think they play up their Armenian ancestry anyway.

I dont watch the show, maybe seen 3 minutes of it ever, simply cause I was to lazy to zap. So am aware of them (hard not to..) but know nothing about them.

It is through jetpunk that I learned/heard they were armenian haha. (You learn the weirdest things from reading the comments. Well mainly that people like to argue, everybody thinks THEIR opinion is right, and hardly anyone checks facts, or previous posts for that matter before they commment..)

I think one of my high school teachers once mentioned that they are of Armenian descent, plus I read an essay by an author that talks about their family's ancestry. Otherwise, I don't pay attention to the Kardashians at all, I mostly just remember it because it's a distinctive fact.

I'm another one who has never seen their show but learned it from this site.

if you read tintin, then you might relate 'karaboudjan' to 'kardashian'.

true. i get your tintin reference

Like my mate Fred Ryan?

what Cruiser008 said!

Schneider is also a well known footballer from the Netherlands, it should be accepted as well.

No.

It asks where the name ORIGINATED.

schneider is german, sneijder is dutch. the difference might be small, but there is a difference. most of the names with schn are german, can't name a single dutch one even though i am dutch

Also a well known Duke from Hazzard County.

Hey, I got em all first go! How the heck I guessed Armenia I don't know. I've only vaguely heard of KK.

McDonald should be Mac Donald. Mc Donald is irish.

both are scottish, Irish would be O'

No, "Mc" is Irish as well. "Mac" is Scottish.

It may surprise you to know that the Scots came from Ireland to Scotland originally. Bringing with them the bagpipes and names.

Great concept for a quiz! It was a lot of fun :)

Could add "Laine" which I am pretty sure is a Finnish name when I see it in endtexts. Or "Pietila" which appears in the Simpsons end texts (Bonita). Or to be the most stereotypical Finnish find a name ending in -inen :)

Jorma Kaukonen! Eero Saarinen! And that, I am sorry to say, is the extent of my knowledge of Finnish surnames (not counting Jean Sibelius, whose first language was Swedish).

Got stuck on Jafari. I have an acquaintance whose last name is Jafari and he is originally from Jordan but I'm sure that his family moved at some point.

When I saw Kardashian and Kim's face I typed in Djibouti

Patel is Pi's surname

Very easy indeed, but fun!

Great quiz. I liked it so much I made my own version. You can find it here:

http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/33628/last-names-by-country-quiz-2

Esposito is about the least Italian name I've ever heard of. Sounds much more Spanish to me. I can scarcely think of any Italian last names which don't have a double letter in - rr ll nn zz pp cc ss tt. Also a and i endings are more common and more archetypal. In my view. (I have Italian relatives, but am not an expert. My own mother's maiden name doesn't match any of the stereotypes except it ends in 'a'. It's only four letters long, which is very atypical!)

Your perceptions of what makes an Italian "sounding" name aren't really relevant here. Esposito is currently the 4th most common name in Italy, and there are tons of well-known Italians or people of Italian descent with this name. There are certainly Spanish, Portuguese, French, and maybe others with this name, but it is only common in Italy.

Of course it is relevant.. it is a quiz where you have to guess where the name comes from. In most cases you do that by analyzing the word. The way vowels and consonents are used, if there is a suffix that you have seen often from other people in that area (like -(v)itz immediately makes me think russian or atleast slavic).

and I had the same thing as the others, didnt get an italian vibe of it, it sounded spanish or mexican. Pepito, perrito, gatito (cant think of common ones, but basicly all diminutives)

I looked it up and know italian etymology is different (from exposed) but if you think it is spanish, it looks like it could be little spouse haha esposa/esposo being spouse (wife/husband) and -ito the diminutive :D

È un cognome molto, molto comune in Italia in particolare nel sud Italia, Campania.

Davano in passato questo cognome ai bambini che crescevano negli orfanotrofi. Infatti questi bambini venivano lasciati in "esposizione" per essere trovati: ecco il nome.

Altri cognomi da trovatelli sono: Innocenti, Degl'Innocenti, Casadei, Di Dio, Casadidio, Diotallevi ecc.

It’s a very, very common surname in Italy especially in southern Italy, Campania. They used to give this name to children growing up in orphanages. In fact, these children were left in "exposure" to be found: here is the name "Exposed". Other surnames from foundlings are: Innocenti, Degl'Innocenti, Casadei, Di Dio, Casadidio, Diotallevi etc.

Missed Patel.

Great quiz!

I know someone with that last name so I'm pretty sure it can be a last name

What about King Abdullah? King is his first name; Abdullah his last. QED.

The name is Arabic, but it's not really used as a surname in Saudi Arabia. I have seen it used as a surname commonly in other Arabic-speaking countries, though.

In any case, the name is from the Arabic language, but not strictly from Saudi Arabian. Most other languages are strongly associated with a certain country or origin (Irish / Ireland, Spanish / Spain), but for Arabic this is not the case. Arabia is much greater, not just geographically but also culturally, than just the Saudi kingdom. So I think Arabia instead of Saudi Arabia should be used as the place of origin for this name.

3:52 minutes left 😁

The word "Iran" just happened to come on in a song I was playing when looking at the name

17/21, glad I got some harder ones like Romania and Ukraine. Knew Armenia from a previous quiz on here!

1:50 left, thanks for 5 points!

Out of these 21 names, there are 11 that belong to people I've met. All of them were born in the US (as far as I know) so it's interesting to see how many people had families that were immigrants

Surely most of the people in USA came from immigrant families?........ Even the native Indians originally came across the Bering Strait from Asia.

Really.... ?!? Can't tell if sarcasm or not

Over time, I noticed that fairly consistently, when Scandinavian surnames ended in "s_n", it was "son" in Sweden and "sen" in Denmark. Now I'll have to keep an eye out for how it's spelled in Norwegian names.

I did better at this than I thought I would. Only missed Teixeira.

Serj Tankian should be the name for Armenia. Or literally any other Armenian person who actually gives half a damn about their heritage.

Got everything except Kardashian, I don't feel to bad about myself

Ivanov is also Serbian last name.

I knew most of them right off the bat except for Ionescu and Jafari. Ionescu I just kept guessing eastern european countries, and Jafaru I kept guessing middle eastern countries.

I keep thinking that Esposito is something Hispanic. I guess it reminds me of España.

Typed German numerous time for Schneider wondering why it wasn't working, only after the quiz to realise Germany was the answer, duhh!

This is very interesting.

I tried Netherlands for smith. It is very common here, though also often written as smith. Since it was about where the name originated, I didnt try usa or uk first. Because many words came into the english language through german or dutch. Though in this case it obviously could have evolved on its own in the uk aswell, since they would have had smithies too ;).

so even if the word itself is derived from german or dutch. By the time lastnames became a thing, the word allready excisted in english.

I spend my whole life here and have been with a smith in every class . Never with a smit or do I know one or anyone that I know knows ones. Personal experiences dont say everything though, just because you havent come across one doesnt mean it is a (common) name here. And because I havent met a smit (even feels weird to write it like that for me..) doesnt mean they are not there. I know they are and indeed more prevalent than smith. There is also smid (and even smidt. Schmidt is german as is schmit) I think the ratio is about 4 smit 1 smid 1 smith.

Suprised that Nguyen only got 71%, I mean ffs 60% of the population has that last name

I'm guessing the European visitors to the site bring down the average. There aren't that many Vietnamese immigrants in Europe, compared to the USA.

It is such an overwhelmingly common name in Vietnam - literally 400,000x more common than the name Smith is in the UK - that if your town has even a small Vietnamese immigrant community you would have definitely heard it many times. Add in the surnames Le, Pham, Tran, Huynh, Phan, Vu, Dang, Bui, Do, Ho, Ngo, Ly, and Duong... and that's 90% of all Vietnamese people.

The quiz asks where the name originated, not where it's more common now.

Nice one, though fairly easy.

4:03, FTR

Thanks!

Done with 4:12 remaining!

Hate that I didn't get "Teixera." I kept thinking it was a Latino name and typed literally every country in Latin America (including Brazil). I thought for sure I already tried Portugal, but I guess I didn't :P

Kardashian is sometimes said to be from Turkish? Is that true?

I got Jafari by thinking about Jafar from the movie Aladdin which I thought had a Middle East setting.

If "Korea" is accepted, can "Persia" be accepted?

Korea is only accepted because the last name Kim comes from the Korean language, which belongs to neither North Korea or South Korea but to both Koreas

Did anyone think about Avatar: The Last Airbender when they saw Papadopoulos?

No...I had to look up what you meant cuz Aang only said that 1 time in 1 episode, not particularly memorable.

When I was rewatching some of it the other day I thought back to this haha

Just to clarify, it's Pippinpaddleopsicopolis, not Papadopoulos (although I see where you get that from). I'm always happy to see Avatar fans in the comments though :)

Me rewatching Avatar while reading this comment section and being 1 minute before the Pippinpaddleopsicopolis scene:

2:15 remaining, got Ionescu cuz it reminded me of Ceaușescu

The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, 326 Indian reservations, and some minor possessions.[j] At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million square kilometers), it is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area.[e] The United States shares significant land borders with Canada to the north and Mexico to the south as well as limited maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, and Russia.[20] With a population of more than 331 million people, it is the third most populous country in the world. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago, and European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies.

Thanks for all that information that has nothing to do with this quiz.

“Korea” is not a country.

Lester Papadopoulous from Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan

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