Popularity of Surnames Globally

Sons carry the family name through generation after generation. Daughters, if they marry a man, take on their husbands' surname. With this principle, I can say that the growth of a surname in popularity depends on how many males are born into the family. Those with the most males in the family will have a more common surname and those that do not have many males in the family will not grow as quickly.

I wondered this process of inheriting surnames happened all over the globe and if the surnames were in any way related. This is what I found:

Country:	Most Common Surname:
Argentina	Fernandez
Barbados	Alleyne
China	Lǐ (李)
Croatia	Horvat
Denmark	Jensen
Equatorial Guinea	Nquema
Finland	Virtanen
India	Devi
Ireland	Murphy
Madagascar	Rakotomalala
Russia	Ivanova
Tanzania	Juma

Also during my investigation, I discovered that some countries have completely different systems than the one I’m used to. For example in Egypt, the typical name is {your name} {your father’s name} {your father’s father’s name}. In this scenario, my name would be Henry Peter Colin and my mother’s name would be Mary Ciarán (Kieran) Pádraig (Patrick). In some Indonesian countries, people tend not to have any form of surname at all.