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Pretty much any country with "-son" names adapted to English forms when they immigrated. So, a Jonsson, Johanneson, or Johansen would become a Johnson. Even unrelated language forms with a patronymic system (like Russian, or other Slavic languages) would sometimes be Anglicized. The same applies to other patronymics, like Peterson, Anderson, etc...
One thing I've always found odd about English-sounding surnames in America is how there are so many people in the US with the name Johnson, apparently the second most common surname there but only tenth in the list over here in the country where the name originates. There must have been a huge amount of Anglicisation of non-English surnames in the US over the years as going by the 1990 census the top 17 surnames in America are all British ones, pretty staggering considering how long it's been since large-scale emigration from Britain to the US and how few of you have mostly British ancestry.
"Johnson" is not exclusively a British last name. Many Scandinavians (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish) also bear this surname. Sometimes it was Anglicized for "Jannsen or Johanneon etc.)
They last emigrated to the US in large numbers in the late 1800s to early part of the 20th Century. Some of my in laws were some of the last to make it through Ellis Island, in the 1920s.
Two other surnames that are often mistaken as exclusively British (by British, I mean specifically English) are Jones (frequently Welsh) and Smith - can be Irish or an Anglicized German name.
More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country.
I just took a look at that list and there are other surnames in the top 10-15 that sound English, but just as often as not aren't.
Miller - May be English, but often is German, German-Jewish, Eastern-European Jewish
Williams- may be Irish
Harris - so many Harris' are actually Eastern European Jews. (Horowitz, Herskowitz, et al)
Re. the commonness of British-sounding surnames among non-British descended Americans, two interesting passages from the Wikipedia article on family names:
Quote:
"Many freed slaves either created family names themselves or adopted the name of their former master."
<<< I'd imagine that would be the last name I'd choose in the circumstances!
Quote:
...due to very low literacy rates, many families could not provide the spelling of their surname, and so the scribe, clerk, minister, or official would write down the name on the basis of how it was spoken, or how they heard it. This results in a great many variations, some of which occurred when families moved to another country (e.g. Wagner becoming Wagoner, or Whaley becoming Wheally). With the increase in bureaucracy, officially-recorded spellings tended to become the standard for a given family.
Yup. We are mutts. I used to think I was half German and half Norwegian. Turns out there is some Swedish on the Norwegian side.
This is what many people end up finding out when they do the research. A friend of mine used to always say he was of German Jewish heritage. When he did the actual digging he found out his distance relatives were mostly Russian.
That's why Malcom X dropped his last name; so he won't have the same last name as the owners of his ancestors.
Saw an Oriental U.S. soldier with the surname of "O". Same military camp, there was also a Black U.S. Army Captain (male) with a surname of "Smallwood". As this and other posts show, the surname of a person (what about the married name of a woman, or an adopted child?) currently may not give an indication of a person's ancestry or background.
I've known "Blacks" that were White...
"Whites" that were Black...
"Greens" that were both Black or White, the same as with "Browns"...
The "Tan" (Asian) I knew was mostly correct...
I mark these kinds of topics at C-D as "YAIEBD" (Yet Another Ethnic-Based Discussion), for people saying that color doesn't matter, it sure comes up alot as a thread topic...
<<< I'd imagine that would be the last name I'd choose in the circumstances!
Oddly, the last name "Washington" is now a more common black last name than white one. I'd assume someone with the last name "Washington" was black.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IBMMuseum
I've known "Blacks" that were White...
My dad grew up in a then British colony. One of his (white British) schoolteachers had a last name of "Black", which the non-white non-native English speaking schoolchildren thought was very amusing.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
Have you been to New England? I don't think purely British ancestry is that commo
Bn in New England. I wrote a longer post partially about that earlier in thread:
Yes just Boston, not as British as you would expect given its history
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I'd imagine that would be the last name I'd choose in the circumstances! 
