What surnames have boomed in UK since the Second World War?
The number of people with surnames including Patel, Hussain and Wang has increased drastically
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Your support makes all the difference.The Second World War marked the start of a wave which saw thousands of people from all over the world make their way to the UK in search of a fresh start.
This movement of mass immigration transformed the country into the hub of multiculturalism that it is today.
As a result, the prevalence of certain surnames in Britain has risen dramatically since 1939, as revealed by research conducted by Ancestry.co.uk.
The researchers used the 1939 England and Wales Register to explore how surnames from countries including Poland, Spain, China and India made their way to the UK during the wartime period.
They then compared the extent to which these surnames have continued to endure in Britain over the past 80 years.
In 1939, there were only 60 people registered in Britain with the surname Patel.
Cut to 2018, and there are now more than 100,000 people in the country with that surname.
In 1939 there were only seven people in the country with the surname Hussain, which has now risen to more than 50,000.
The beginning of the war saw many people from Poland come to the UK as they fled the Nazi regime in Europe.
This led to various Polish surnames, including Wisniewski, Nowak and Kaminski, appearing for the first time in the country in 1939 and increasing in number over the years.
Other surnames on the list that have proliferated since the Second World War include Miah, Wang, Nowak, Sanchez and Hernandez.
Russell James, a family history and DNA expert at Ancestry, explains how the war sparked a surge in immigration which led to Britain becoming the diverse country that we recognise today.
“This research shows how much of the diversity we know and value began during the war period,” he says.
“Many of these names may have travelled here from the British Empire or as refugees during the war.
“We hope that this research will inspire many to discover how their grandparents and great-grandparents came to be here and will remind their descendants of the part that the war played in shaping the Britain we now live in.”
A study led by the University of the West of England in Bristol calculated how many people with the aforementioned surnames are currently living in the UK.
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