Names of United States US

Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 records Smith as the commonest surname in the United States; the names that most distinguish the United States from the rest of the world are John, Robert and Michael.

Written in English, Spanish.

Population
333M
Official registers
5
Name forms recorded
1.1M
ABuilt from 5 official registers (2020), 1,071,870 name forms in our corpus.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of United States are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, United States included.

How names work in United States

Names in United States follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in United States

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020 — 51,296 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
7Mary1.8M1
8Maria1.6M—
14Jennifer1.3M17
18Elizabeth1.2M27
19Patricia1.2M21
20Linda1.2M23
26Susan979K19
28Jessica956K60
29Barbara942K32
33Karen881K36
35Sarah873K40
36Lisa864K28
39Sandra780K53
40Nancy772K51
42Michelle756K34
44Emily755K—
45Ashley741K—
50Amanda698K85
51Kimberly695K56
53Laura679K63

Where the two lists disagree

20 of Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex 2020Across all recordsmary: 7 → 1 · ranks higher across all records7. mary1maria: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. marianot rankedjennifer: 14 → 1714. jennifer17elizabeth: 18 → 27 · ranks lower across all records18. elizabeth27patricia: 19 → 2119. patricia21linda: 20 → 2320. linda23susan: 26 → 19 · ranks higher across all records26. susan19
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020 on the left; every record we hold for United States on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of United States

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when United States holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

EngBrooklynAngelesDiegoDetroitPasoUsaJohnRobertEastMichaelJamesOrlandoDavidWilliamStevenFloridaPalmCharlotteRatonJoseCharlesFremontJosephMadisonRichardDesJenniferAnnMariettaMariaItaFreBrianLindaSusanTayviaChristopherLouisMarkTheChristineLisaDianeKarenEdwardRenoThomasBarbaraMichellePatriciaJeffreyJasonKevinMatthewAnthonyDonaldKennethElizabethEric
Sized by how much of the difference between United States's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Over time

MaryElizabethPatriciaJenniferLinda1880202599,692
SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), 1880–2025 (146 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Marygiven name(measured from records)
Sansurname(measured from records)
Michaelgiven name(measured from records)
Johngiven name(measured from records)
Jamesgiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in United States, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in United States?
Mary, according to Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex (2020), with 1,765,503 bearers recorded among girls.
What is the most common surname in United States?
Smith, according to Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 (2010), with 2,442,977 bearers recorded.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of United States”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/US (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex.