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Thoughts on Presidential Surnames

2023-01-19 00:06 EST

The other night, around 5 AM, I was hit with the realization that, hey, most US presidents have had last names ending in -n. Washington, Jefferson, Clinton... that can't be a coincidence, right?

Sure, it's not like having a last name that ends with n makes you more likely to become president. But on the other hand, it's maybe not a huge surprise that so many of them fit this pattern.

Let's look at the stats. Of the 45 people who have been president (sorry Grover Cleveland, you only count once), their surnames end with the following letters at the following frequencies:

Number of occurances	Letters
1	A, G, K, P
2	H, Y
3	D, S
4	E, T
6	R
17 (!!!)	N

17 out of 45 is not a majority, but it still is a pretty significant chunk, especially when the next closest letter is 11 presidents away. If you actually look at the surnames ending with n, there's a reason it's so common.

Etymology	Names fitting the pattern
Old English tūn "homestead, settlement"	Washington, Clinton
English son, as a patronymic (or matronymic in the case of Madison)	Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, W. H. Harrison, A. Johnson, B. Harrison, Wilson, L. B. Johnson, Nixon
Other assorted etymologies	Van Buren, Buchanan, Lincoln, Truman, Reagan, Biden

Because so many presidents have been of English heritage, and Germanic languages like English like to have patronymic surnames, son takes the cake and is definitely the most common morpheme in presidential surnames.

Future areas of research: how many Americans have last names ending with n? How has its popularity changed over time? What about other federal bodies, like the Senate or the House of Representatives? It is worth noting that with just a glance through the names of the current US senators, only Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has a -son surname.

Tags: etymology • names • US presidents