People in Sweden are becoming bored with their surnames. All to often, the Swedish names are based around the suffix 'son' at the end of their surname, like Johansson, Andersson, or Ericsson. So now inventive Swedes are reaching back into their family history or even making up names to stand out from the rest. There are 290,000 Johanssons, the most common surname, followed by 286,000 Anderssons, in a population of about eight million ethnic Swedes. It's particularly people with a surname ending in -son who want to change.
People can adopt a name if they can prove it has been in their family, or make one up.