The Most Common Spanish Surnames in the United States: Some New Data Sources

Previous investigations of the most common Spanish surnames in the US have relied on name lists published by the Social Security Administration. Conclusions based only on this information are unreliable, however, in part because the lists include residents of Puerto Rico & do not provide figures broken down by region. Because certain common Puerto Rican names are less prevalent among members of other Hispanic ethnic groups, Social Security data give disproportionate weight to Puerto Rican names in frequency rankings for the 50 states. Data from the National Death Index & Medicare enrollment files, two sources not available until recently, allow such skewing to be avoided. The Medicare data permit frequency ranking of Spanish surnames for specific geographic areas, showing that the rank order of some names differs markedly from region to region. This variation is held to reflect the diverse origins of the Hispanic populations of different areas of the US. 3 Tables, 7 References. Adapted from the source document