What the country’s last names tell us about our changing population

All five of those names are mostly reported by people who identify as white or black, according to a Census Bureau analysis of the 2010 Census.

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But the growing Hispanic population has pushed surnames reported by Hispanics up the rankings since 2000. Garcia has gone from eighth in sixth, and two new Hispanic names – Rodriguez and Martinez – joined the top 10 for the first time.

Rounding out the top 10 most frequent last names:

Census respondents reported about 6.3 million different surnames in 2010. Only 11 names were reported more than a million times each. The vast majority — 62 percent — were reported only once.

Joshua Comenetz, assistant chief of the Population Division’s Population Geography staff and manager of the surnames project for the Census, said the high ranking of some Hispanic names is due there being less diversity of names in that population.

“There is more surname clustering among Hispanics,” Comenetz said. “Twenty-six surnames cover a quarter of the Hispanic population and 16 percent of Hispanic people reported one of the top 10 Hispanic names. The pattern is similar for Asians and blacks.”

The most rapidly increasing surnames among the top 1,000 in both 2000 and 2010 were mostly Asian: Zhang (up 111 percent), Li (93 percent), Ali (66 percent), Liu (64 percent) and Khan (63 percent) top the list.

Three of the 15 fastest growing were Hispanic: Vazquez (up 63 percent), Bautista (59 percent) and Velazquez (59 percent).