A Cock and Balls Story - is your surname at risk of extinction?

The population of Great Britain has more than doubled since the 1881 census, from just under 30 million then to around 68 million today. So the number of people with any given surname has also increased. There are nearly 700,000 people called Smith today, up from just over 400,000 in 1881.

Some surnames, though, have bucked the trend. There are now fewer people holding them than there were in 1881. If the decrease continues, they are at risk of becoming extinct altogether.

There are many reasons for surnames decreasing in popularity. One is spelling. Illiteracy was common in 1881, so some people may not have been entirely sure how to spell their own names. And later generations may have assumed that a previous spelling was simply a mistake, and corrected it to the more common version.

Surnames such as Mathews, Mitchel, Bennet and Russel, for example, differ from other spellings by a single letter and clearly come from the same origin. So it's not surprising that, over time, the written form of the surname has coalesced around the most common spelling.

Other surnames, though, aren't simple spelling variants of more common names. There are some which appear to have simply gone out of fashion. Longbottom, Sidebottom, Ramsbottom and Winterbottom are all less common now than they were in 1881. Maybe they just sound a bit too vulgar.

Other names which have decreased in usage for probably similar reasons include Smellie (down 65% since 1881), Balls (down 61%) and Cock (down a massive 72%). Nutter is also less common now, although it hasn't seen as big a drop.

Cock has probably migrated to Cook in many cases, being a very similar spelling, although the two names have very different roots. And Ball, in the singular, continues to be common. Although Ed Balls Day is keeping the plural version alive in the public consciousness.

And then there are names which seem to be disappearing for no obvious reason. They aren't a spelling variant of a different name, they don't have any obvious negative connotations. And yet there are fewer holders of them than there used to be.

So if your name is Entwistle, Gardener, Cowper, Duck, Wolstencroft or Gilby, maybe you should consider having more children, to keep your name alive!