The World's Most Common Names

  

Found below are the world's most common names for the following ten genres.  

CHURCH NAMES

The most common name attributed to a church in the western world is St John, where it has been attributed to over three thousand churches in the United States and about the same number around Europe.

This name is particularly prevalant simply because there have been more saints with the name John than any other.  

MEN’S NAMES

The most common first name for men in the world is Mohammed.

The name is an Islamic name which comes from the religion’s prophet Mohammed.

Every Muslim family has at least one member with this name or one of it's derivitives such as Mehmet or Ahmed. 

Due to linguistic differences there does not appear to be a common female name although the most common trend for a girl's name around the world is to name them after flowers.  

MONEY

The most common name for a monetary unit is the cent. The Cent is 1/100^th of several of the world’s currencies where it is used by thirty six Dollar using nations, seventeen Euro using countries and sixty six countries which use other types of currency around the world.

  

PATRON SAINT’S NAMES

According to the Catholic Church the most common saint's name attributed to civic buildings other than churches is Saint Peter.  

Saint Peter probably became popular as he is the holder of the keys of heaven, not just in Christianity but in many other world religions.    

PET’S NAMES

Various pet websites have come up with the name Max as being the world's most common name for a dog. This could be due to the fact that the name Max is one of the very few names worldwide that does not rhyme with any other name or command, making it very a suitable for a pet.

According to the same pet website the most common name for a cat, and this is a far more popular name than the most common dog’s name due to it’s many linguistic variants, is Tiger, which needs no explanation what so ever.   

PLACE NAMES

According to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (GIA) the most common place name in the world is San Jose. This name, which is Spanish for Saint Joseph has been attributed to over five thousand towns and cities found in the Spanish speaking world. 

STREET NAMES

According to various research agencies verifying the world's most common street name was quite problematic due to language and cultural differences, but they have been able to ascertain that the most common street name in the United States is Second Street and the most common street name in the British Isles is High Street, followed closely (In both countries) by Church Street.

SURNAMES

With China having the world's largest population it was no surprise to learn that a Chinese surname would be the most common in the world. 

The name Li is the the surname of over two million people in China and that number again when factoring in the various Romanised variants of the name such as Lee, Lea, Lei, Ley and Leigh.

TOPOGRAPHICAL NAMES

The most common topographical names are tautological, two words meaning the same thing both of which have been sourced from two different languages. 

For example River River as in the River Avon in the U.K, Mount Mount such as Mount Fuji Yama in Japan, Lake Lake such as Lake Nyassa in Tanzania, Island Island such as the Gilli Islands in Indonesia or Desert Desert such as the Sahara Desert in Africa.

This happens a lot around the world with the most popular tautological names found in the English speaking world being Barhill, Glendale and Waterford.