Swedish surname statistics 2012

I get a lot of questions from people in USA with the surname Lindberg. They usually want to know how we are related since they have Swedish ancestry and share the surname Lindberg.

I have to explain that Lindberg is one of the most common surnames in Sweden, and that is not because we are a large family, the majority of all Lindberg´s are not even remotely related to each other.

In December 31 2012, there were 27350 people with the surname Lindberg living in Sweden. Thats ranking it number 17 on the most common surname list for 2012.

The top outstanding 3 surnames in Sweden (2012) was;

Andersson with 251621 individuals
Johansson with 251495 individuals
Karlsson with 223151 individuals

Followed by;
Nilsson, Eriksson, Larsson, Olsson, Persson, Svensson and Gustafsson, rounding up the top 10.

I have earlier explained why we have this kind of surnames and how the became so widely used. But probably this will eventually change as it becomes more usual and popular to change common surnames into unique newly created surnames, or to reuse an old surname from your ancestors.

If anyone are interested in statistics for Sweden and also names and surnames, please check out the SCB website (in English).