National Records of Scotland

Preserving the past, Recording the present, Informing the future

List of Data Tables

List of Data Tables

Most common surnames – Top Twenties for selected years

This table shows the Top Twenty surnames in the registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths for every fifth year from 1975 to 2020. Max file size 19 KB.

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Top Twenty surnames in the registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths for every fifth year from 1975 to 2020

(Excel    CSV)

Lists of most common surnames in the registers for selected years

2023: Most Common Surnames

(CSV)

2022 : Most Common Surnames

(CSV)

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2021: Most Common Surnames

(Excel)

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2020: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV)

data-icon 2019: Most Common Surnames
(Excel    CSV    PDF)
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2018: Most Common Surnames
(Excel    CSV    PDF)

data-icon 2017: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

data-icon 2016: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

data-icon 2015: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

data-icon 2014: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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2013: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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2010: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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2005: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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2000: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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1995: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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1990: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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1985: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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1980: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

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1975: Most Common Surnames

(Excel    CSV    PDF)

Note: these lists were produced from the National Records of Scotland’s Vital Events statistical database, which contains records of individual births, marriages and deaths. The lists are available only for a limited range of years because 1974 is the earliest year for which there are records in the statistical database.

CSV file containing summary records which cover each of the years for which lists have been produced

This file contains one record for each combination of ‘year’ and ‘surname’ for which that surname occurred at least ten times (in total) in the birth, marriage and death registers of that year. The fields in the file are as follows:

  • ‘yr’ – the year (e.g. 1975, 2013)
  • ‘surname’
  • ‘Number’ – the total number of occurrences of that surname in that year’s registers (which must be at least 10)
  • ‘rank’ – the rank of that surname in that year’s list, expressed as a simple number. If two or more surnames occurred equally often in a given year, they have exactly the same numerical value here, so this field does not directly identify any surnames which was involved in a tie in rank.
  • ‘Position’ – the rank of the surname in that year’s list, expressed as a character string. If two or more surnames occurred equally often in a given year, this field gives their numerical rank followed by an equals sign (‘=’) and therefore does indicate if a surname was involved in a tie in rank.

The rows are in ascending order of ‘yr’ / ‘rank’ / ‘surname’.

Most Common Surnames - multi-year data (CSV 927 KB)

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