Could it be possible that all people with last name Washington?

Question:...could be related. Pretty much african americans are the only ones with the last name, with the exception of our first president.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: ...could be related. Pretty much african americans are the only ones with the last name, with the exception of our first president.

Not at all. George Washington had no children. He WAS part of the Washington family, which has descendants (and they won't all carry the last name, but they are still related).
Not all African Americans with the name, will be related. History is factual, that families of former slaves, did not have surnames prior to emancipation, and they took their family names from different sources. Sometimes, from their former owner, not always. In fact... George and Jim may well be brothers who were slaves, and who took different last names when freed.
A very COMMON misconception when people start researching, is how a name is connected. I am pretty outspoken that in reality, surnames are a very tiny part of finding ancestry or relatives. And for our African American families, that is even more true.

Well theres your answer... No It can't be possible that all people with the last name washington could be related...Like you said "Pretty much african americans are the only ones with the last name, with the exception of our first president."...But than again any thing is possible :)

It COULD be possible, but they're not.

Africans who were made slaves did not originally have the name Washington, obviously. Their descendants wound up with Washington, either because their masters were named Washington or because they chose the name Washington when they became free.

Of course, if you go back far enough -- all Africans are related and if you go back even farther -- We're ALL related! :)

Not likely I'm afraid. The name is from old English and actually describes a tribe or people. Ing means 'the people of' and ham the 'place where they live' (it's where the word home originated.) Wash is probably a variant of a leaders name, possibly Wassa, so it literally means 'the place where Wassa's people live', and many families in that region would have taken the name as surnames came into more common use. It's the same way that people adopted surnames like London or York.

Nope, you must remember that when slaves were being brought to this country they took who ever they could. There could be 200 in one shipload and as few or as many as aprox. 10 families to possibly 190 different families They could have been seperated by accident or intentional. Once the slaves were freed many had no memory of their names other than what the owner gave them, and many were given the last name of their owners when they were emancipated.. So you could have a hundred people given the same last name and many are unrelated by blood. I know how flusterating it can be, I have found my son-in-laws grandfather, but their last name is like Smith or Jones, very common and I found 28 men in the same county with the same name, 9 had the same middle name and five were all born within a three year period. No wonder my hair is turning grey :-)

There are several Washington familys here where I live and only two of the familys are black the other 4 are white.