Australian Last Name Generator

500 surnames as they are found in Australia, from Kelly, Campbell and Trezise to Schubert, Papadopoulos and Nguyen. Family names carried by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, such as Yunupingu and Mabo, are labeled with their people or community.

About Australian last names

Australia's surname stock was set by the convicts, soldiers and free settlers who arrived from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales after 1788. Smith, Jones, Williams and Brown lead here as they do in Britain, but the Irish share is heavier than in England, which is why Kelly, Ryan, Murphy and O'Brien sound so at home in an Australian story. Cornish miners carried their Tre-, Pol- and Pen- names to the copper towns of South Australia, and Prussian and Silesian Lutherans gave the Barossa Valley its Schuberts, Lehmanns and Henschkes.

After 1945 the mix widened fast. Italian, Greek, Maltese, Croatian, Dutch and Polish families arrived under the post-war migration program, Lebanese families settled in Sydney and Melbourne, and from the late 1970s Vietnamese, Chinese and Indian surnames joined them. Nguyen is now among the most common surnames in both of those cities, usually written without its Vietnamese accent marks.

The list also holds family names carried by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, such as Yunupingu, Marika, Mabo and Namatjira. Each is followed in brackets by the people or community the family is known from. Many Aboriginal families carry English, Irish or Scottish surnames instead, often taken on at missions and cattle stations, so a surname alone says little about who a person is.

How to choose Australian last names

• Match the surname to the family's arrival story. A fifth-generation grazier is more likely a McKenzie or a Durack than a Kokkinakis, while a character born in 1990s Cabramatta or Footscray could easily be a Tran or a Pham.
• Use region for texture. Cornish names such as Trezise, Pascoe and Polkinghorne cluster around the old copper towns of South Australia, and Barossa German names such as Henschke, Nitschke and Kleinig belong to the same state.
• The names followed by a people or community, such as Gurruwiwi (Yolngu) or Kartinyeri (Ngarrindjeri), belong to living families. Do your own reading before you give one to a character, and leave the bracketed label off when you write the name down.
• Australians shorten everything, so test the nickname. A Thompson becomes Thommo, a Robinson becomes Robbo and a Sullivan becomes Sully, and a surname that shortens well tends to sound right in dialogue.
• Vietnamese, Croatian and Serbian surnames usually lose their accent marks on Australian documents, so Nguyen, Tran, Juric and Jovanovic are spelled here the way they appear in everyday Australian use.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most common last names in Australia?

Smith, Jones, Williams, Brown and Wilson sit at the top of most Australian surname counts, much as they do in Britain. Irish names such as Kelly, Ryan and Walsh rank higher than they do in England, and Nguyen has joined the leaders in Sydney and Melbourne. All of these are in the list.

Why do some names have a word in brackets after them?

Those are family names carried by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, and the brackets give the people or community the family is known from, as in Yunupingu (Yolngu), Mabo (Torres Strait Islander) and Rioli (Tiwi). The label is there for context and is not part of the surname. Many other Aboriginal families have English, Irish or Scottish surnames, so no surname on this page tells you a person's ancestry by itself.

Are there surnames that are distinctly Australian?

Very few surnames began in Australia, but some are far more visible there than in the rest of the English-speaking world. Cornish names like Trezise and Nankivell, Barossa German names like Seppelt and Roennfeldt, and Maltese names like Farrugia and Zammit are everyday in parts of Australia and much less familiar elsewhere.

Can I use these names for a novel or game character?

Yes. Most of these are everyday family names shared by many people. A few, such as Bradman, Whitlam and Monash, are so tied to one famous Australian that readers will think of that person first, so pair them with care. The names followed by a people or community belong to particular families, so read up on them before you borrow one.

Related generators

All 500 Australian last names