Assamese Last Names in American Census of 2000!

According to Wikipedia, the first census in the world was conducted in Babylon in 3800 BC. There was a census conducted in Persia around 500 BC. The Maurya Dynasty in Northern India conducted a census in around 300 BC. There are several references to counting people or censuses in the Bible including command from God to King David of Israel to “Go, number Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring me the number to me, that I may know it.” The first modern census in the UK was conducted in 1801. The first census in India was completed in 1872; it took more than ten years to complete. The first US census was conducted in 1790; it has been conducted every ten years since.

From what I can tell from my research, the US Census, starting 1850 has collected data on surnames or last names of individuals living in the US. However, it has not regularly published the last name data due to reasons of privacy and accuracy. The last name data from the 2000 census were recently published. The 2000 Census data on last names was published in November 2007. The top ten last names in the US are given below.

The most common last name in the US in the 2000 census was Smith. In fact, Smith has been a perennial top last name in the US. Out of every one hundred thousand people in the US, more than seventeen hundred have Smith as the last name. Johnson is the second most common last name with almost thirteen hundred and fifty out of every one hundred thousand people carrying it. As you can see, among the top ten surnames, seven are of British origin: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller, Davis and Wilson. However, the big surprise in the 2000 was that two Hispanic last names rose to the top ten. Garcia is the eighth most common last name and Rodriguez is the ninth most common last name in the US. Garcia moved up from 18th and Rodriguez from 22nd in the 1990 Census (Table 2).

The number of Asian last names also has gone up substantially in the 2000 Census compared to the 1990 Census. For example, Lee is the 22nd most common last name in the US. Lees are almost equally divided between whites and Asians. Lee is a common last name among Korean and Chinese immigrants. Nguyen, which is a Vietnamese last name also ranks quite high.

Among Indian last names, Patel is the most common last name in the US. It ranks 172nd. There were 145,066 Patels in the US in 2000! Singh ranks 396th with 72,642 individuals. Here is a small list of most common Indian last names in the US according to the 2000 Census.

I spent several days looking through the list that contains all the last names that have one hundred or more individuals with that name. The list is long with 151672 last names. I spent many hours looking at “Worldwide Directory of Non-Resident Assamese” published by ASA in 2007 and looking at the last names and searching for them in the last name Excel file I downloaded from the US Census site. Since, it’s possible that I may miss some last names, I looked through the file line by line also. Here are the most common Assamese last names in the 2000 US Census data.

The entries in the table (Table 3) need some explanation. Das, the top Assamese last name, is the 7091st most common last name with 4348 individuals having this last name in 2000. However, we all know that Das is not only an Assamese name, but common among Bengalis and others too. Choudhury, the second most common Assamese last name, is also common in North and East India, and Bangladesh and Pakistan too. Similarly, Nath, Pathak, Datta, Dutta, Goswami, Bhattacharjee, Adkhikari and Talukdar are common in other states of India besides Assam. One can say what about the last names Borah and Bora? Of those having the last name Bora, according to the US Census data of 2000, 69.93% are white and 21.99% are Asian. It’s quite likely that the Asian portion is all Assamese. Thus, according to the US Census of 2000, there are possibly 128 Boras of Assamese origin in the US. Similarly, of all the individuals having the last name Borah, 87.33% are white and only 4.52 are Asian; this gives us possibly a total of 41 Borahs of Assamese origin in the US in 2000. Possibly, the only pure Assamese last name that occurs in the list is Barua with 414 individuals with this last name. However, this count sounds too large to me after perusing the directories of Assamese people in the US, published during the past few years by ASA and AANA, this number looks a little large. There are Baruas one can find in Bengal and Bangladesh, but they are usually considered to be Assamese who fled there during the Myan or Burmese. Kalita is a last name common in Assam, but according to the US Census, 88.13% of the Kalitas are white and only 7.65% are Asian; this gives us possibly 29 Kalitas of Assamese origin in 2000 in the US. This number looks acceptable. There were 132 Bhuyans in 2000 in the US. Bhuyan is a common last name in Assam, but is common also in Bangladesh and even Orisssa, I believe. So, how many are Assamese, it’s difficult to tell!!

By Jugal Kalita, Colorado