With all the Andersons and Olsons and Johnsons around the Land of 10,000 Lakes, what last names are the most common in Minnesota? Also, just how common are those last names? 

I did a quick survey around the office, asking what everyone thought the most common name around Minnesota would be, and the top answers were "Johnson" and "Anderson". As it turns out, those are the top two names, according to forebears.io.

Utilizing a series of data points like birth and death information from around the state, Forebears lists Johnson as the most common surname in the state, with roughly 76,000 of the 5.457 million people in the state having the last name. That's about 1 in every 72 people in the state, which is pretty crazy. Anderson, which comes in second on the list, has just over 51,000 people sporting it as their last name. That's 1 in roughly every 107 people.

According to Ancestry.com, Johnson is English and Scottish in origin, which seems kind of strange considering the strong Scandinavian ties Minnesota has. The name is patronymic from the personal name John. As for Anderson, this name also has ties to Scotland and Northern England. Ancestry.com says it is a "very common patronymic from the personal name Ander(s), a northern Middle English form of Andrew."

Here is the listing of the top 30 last names in Minnesota, according to forebears.io:

  1. Johnson
  2. Anderson
  3. Nelson
  4. Olson
  5. Peterson
  6. Smith
  7. Larson
  8. Miller
  9. Carlson
  10. Hanson
  11. Erickson
  12. Thompson
  13. Brown
  14. Williams
  15. Jones
  16. Lee
  17. Meyer
  18. Schmidt
  19. Swanson
  20. Hansen
  21. Davis
  22. Jensen
  23. Wilson
  24. Schultz
  25. Martin
  26. Berg
  27. Thomas
  28. (Tie) Taylor / Yang
  29. White

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