Dweezil Zappa, son of late rock singer Frank Zappa, poses prior to a news conference in Berlin on June 1, 2005. (Franka Bruns/Associated Press)

Centuries ago, when there were fewer humans on the planet, people didn't need unique names, or surnames for that matter. In fact, even today in remote places like Papua New Guinea some individuals still go by just one handle.

Then nations grew and people had to come up with second names for practical, administrative reasons. And they weren't very creative at it.

So goes the reason for the many John Smiths out there, and all those Johnson and Li names as well. Li, in fact, looks to be Canada's most common surname, according to a 2007, countrywide phone directory that lists 83,743 of them.

But common or not, much is revealed in a surname. In fact, some people, like Jack Chambers, make a career of figuring them out.

A University of Toronto linguistics professor, Chambers used to decode surnames for the old CBC Radio program This Country in the Morning. As he says, surnames are "one of those things that we don't give a moment's thought to, and when you do, all of sudden it's like a whole universe unfolds, because the names are connected to meanings."

Both Smith and Johnson, for example, are British names and in England, many men tended to take surnames based on their trades. Smith means metalworker.

Mostly, however, people would call themselves after their fathers. A man whose father was named John would be sure to register as "Johnson," so as not to miss out on the family's land after his father had passed away. Jones also indicates a son of John, but it flows from the Welsh pronunciation, which explains why many with that last name came from Wales.

People also took surnames because they had to — governments found it easier to keep tabs on its growing public if John was followed by a Hancock.

In China, the government put a limit on surnames at one point. All citizens in one province might have been named Wong, says Chambers. "The emperors wanted to make certain they knew the affiliation of people," where they came from and who they supported. But of course people move around.

Prevalence combined with transience makes Wong so ubiquitous today. The Cornish name Martin tells a similar story. It's one of the most common anglophone surnames likely because people from Cornwall, in the U.K., tended to disperse more often. They were a mining-based society, and when the metals in England ran out, many Cornish tradesmen moved to maintain their skills. For this reason, you'll find many Cornish names in southern Australia today.

The wild side of naming

There have been odder ways of selecting a moniker. Wild, Wilde or Wildman, for example, would have been chosen for a long lost relative's ailment.

If your name is Wild or Wildman, "your ancestor around the year 1080 was some kind of a nut case. There's almost no doubt about it," quips Chambers.

He recalls Wildman as one of the stranger names he's researched. His job on the CBC show was to uncover the origin of listeners' surnames — and sometimes, unintentionally, the skeletons in their closets.

People who study names, called onomasticians, know that a surname sometimes evolves from a person's nickname, which can be based on his or her qualities.

In China, where fewer surnames exist, nicknames aren't just for fun. Someone named Li Wei (the Chinese convention is surname first), might be called Little Li Wei, based on that person's height in comparison to others with the same name. The anglophone surname Little also came about this way.

One study found 408 monosyllabic surnames existed in Shanghai. In China, with most surnames being only one syllable, there is less of a pool to choose from. The Chinese term for "everyman," for example, is "Old Hundred Surnames," which plays into the myth the Chinese have only 100 of them.

Over time, the number of surnames has actually not increased with the population, which has made many of them even more common. Says Chambers: "We've got just exactly the same resources now as we had a thousand years ago in Europe, and 3,000 years ago in China when surnaming began."

The name game

In some places, there are fewer surnames because all babies born into one tribe were given the same name. It's a phenomenon linking culture and religion to the kinds of names people chose.

Saudis, for example, use at least three names — a first name, a father's name, a tribal name and occasionally a favourite relative's designation. The tribal name is given to all the children born into the same tribe.

After the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., American officials said this naming convention led to at least five mistaken identities when they were trying to track down suspected hijackers. But in Saudia Arabia, the practice is not meant to confuse, it is meant to encourage group solidarity.

Ancient Roman culture had a similar convention. For example, Julius Caesar's first name was Gaius, and his clan name was Julius. Caesar wasn't his surname either. It was a title meaning "czar" or "king", explains Len Chester, a resident genealogist at the Ontario Genealogical Society.

In his research for families, Chester has found the church played a role in preventing names from becoming too common. "They often tried to interfere in these things. The Catholic Church during the Middle Ages tried to extend the reins of exclusion. The Roman rule was you couldn't marry someone if you were in four degrees of relation."

As recently as 1995, a century-old ban was lifted in Korea, allowing people with the same surname to marry. As a result, one in every five Koreans, those called Kim, saw their marital prospects increase dramatically.

Tracing Tremblay

Another prevalent Canadian name is Tremblay. It's the Quebec version of Smith.

The Tremblays, who have the most common name in Montreal, can trace their roots back to one farmer, Pierre Tremblay, who had 10 children in the 1600s. Ensuring his legacy were four sons and a preponderance of male offspring down the line.

Quebec's homogeneity has also helped the Tremblay cause, along with the province's many small towns. It's in the cities where surnames become more diverse.

In Montreal, the Nguyens may soon outnumber the Tremblays, according to the Institut de la statistique du Quebec. But Montreal is an anomaly because Nguyen is the only non-French name in the city's top 20 most common names, according to the telephone book.

In Toronto, anglophone names are easily matched by the influx of Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese ones. The Lees and Nguyens are more than keeping up with the Joneses and Smiths. In fact, Lee is the most common surname in the Toronto White Pages.

Nguyens are racking up Montreal phonebook pages partially because the name was widespread throughout Vietnam, its country of origin, whereas Tremblay comes from one small area in France.

Many Europeans were named after the village they lived in, especially if they came from France, Italy or Greece.

Location is everything for people with names like Margaret Atwood, whose ancestors likely hailed from a village with a forest, says Chambers. Paris Hilton's ancestors would have at one time lived in a town on a hill.

Until about the 1980s, Smith was the most common surname in every large English-speaking city in the world (except for Cardiff, Wales, where it was Jones), says Chambers. It is not anymore.

The new names at the top of the listings today — the Patels, Chans and Khans — say much about Canada's increasing diversity. The country is also becoming more accepting of it, according to Chester, who adds that while many people used to cover up their ethnically-chequered past, today they're actually searching for one.

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