The surname Young - what ethnicity? asian? white? black?

Question:

The surname Young - what ethnicity? asian? white? black?

i notice all kinds of people have that last name i was wondering what kind of people usually have it

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Some Chinese with that surname spell it "Yong" or "Yung". Some spell it "Young". Most Blacks in the USA have European surnames that their slave ancestors adopted when they were freed. That's why Malcolm X used "X" - so he would not have a European surname.

Lots of German and Dutch spelled "Jung" as "Young" when they came to the USA so that their neighbors would pronounce it properly. "J" in German is "Y" in English - Chuck Yeager's ancestors were probably "Jaeger" 400 years ago. everything is possible....
i got a friend's surname is Lee (usually its chinese or asians having this last name)
she is a black!!

but most probably from asia... china?vietnam?thailand?u never know unless u ask that person... I think the origin is originally from England and that area, but in America a variety of people can have it because when people immigrated over, some of their last names changed to become more 'American'. So Young can be the original British name, or it could be the American version of a different name. (a Yang from China could become a Young in America, same for Jung from Germany).

Another example of this is the German name Schmit. Quite often it was changed to Smith when the German family immigrated to America to sound more 'American".

Here's a link explaining the origin from ancestory.com:

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/fact...

Hope this answers your question! It can be both black and white. You have to understand that black Americans usually took the names of their slaveholders. So there really isn't no specific white name or black name in the U. S.

In Chinese there is a Yong.

Some languages spell the name differently.
In German Jung is use. The German J is pronouced like a Y in English. Sometimes immigrants from Germany had their names changed to Yung or Young. Young
English, Scottish, and northern Irish: distinguishing name (Middle English yunge, yonge ‘young’), for the younger of two bearers of the same personal name, usually distinguishing a younger brother or a son. In Middle English this name is often found with the Anglo-Norman French definite article, for example Robert le Yunge.
Americanization of a cognate, equivalent, or like-sounding surname in some other language, notably German Jung and Junk, Dutch (De) Jong(h) and Jong, and French Lejeune and LaJeunesse.
assimilated form of French Dion or Guyon.
Chinese: see Yang.

www.ancestry.com I had friend who changed their name from Johnson to Young when entering that States. I think of the last name Young the same as I do Lee. Both names can be Chinese or British in origin. I am related to British Youngs, so it really depends. Young can possibly be from any of several sources.
German (Jung pronounced "yung" meaning "youthful")
Asian (Yong, Yun, Yung )
Danish ( Jan pronounced "Yawn" )

American blacks at the end of the civil war often took the surname of their former owner when they were freed.

Many American surnames are phonetic spellings of foreign names. Some are also odd mispellings resulting from miscommunications between immigrants and immigration service clerks.

Here in Nashville, there is a street named Demonbreun. It was named for an early French-Canadian settler, a trapper and fur trader named Timothy de Montbrun.