The U.S. Census Bureau released on April 14 a series of data tables listing the most common first and last names reported in the 2020 Census.
The release includes national-level counts of last names by race and Hispanic origin, first names by race and Hispanic origin, as well as first names by sex. A summary table is also available comparing the most common names in the 1790, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 Censuses.
According to the Census Bureau, this is the first time since the 1990 Census that data on first names have been provided. The agency has produced counts of common surnames for each census since that year. The term “predominantly” is used in these tables to indicate when a majority of people with a certain name identified with one race, Hispanic origin or sex category; for example, “Garcia” is described as a predominantly Hispanic last name because “91% of the people named Garcia chose Hispanic in their response to the 2020 Census.”
Eight surnames—Brown, Davis, Johnson, Jones, Miller, Smith, Williams and Wilson—have remained among the top fifteen since America’s first census in 1790. Since the year 2000 however six predominantly Hispanic surnames (Garcia, Gonzalez, Hernandez, Lopez, Martinez and Rodriguez) have joined this group. Between 2010 and 2020 nearly all of the fastest-growing last names among the top one thousand were predominantly Asian—a shift from previous decades reflecting changes in immigration patterns.
Despite women outnumbering men nationwide in recent years “the top five most common first names were all predominantly male.” The report notes that female given names show more variety than male ones; some popular unisex choices like Harley or Quinn are close to evenly split between genders.
The files published contain only frequencies for individual first or last names without identifying specific individuals or combinations thereof. Statistical safeguards are used to protect confidentiality of responses. Full datasets and methodology are available on census.gov.
