The history of your name

The AMES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 21,855 1499 0.008 81
United States (1880 census) 8,467 709 0.017 169
Change since 1880 +13388 -790 -0.009 -88
Other Countries
Australia 329 4789 0.002 20
United Kingdom 2,206 2723 0.005 48
Top States for AMES by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 2,313 1403 0.007 68
New York 1,576 1135 0.008 83
Florida 1,154 1775 0.007 72
Maine 973 204 0.076 763
Washington 960 709 0.016 163
Top States for AMES by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 973 204 0.076 763
New Hampshire 314 578 0.025 254
Idaho 278 564 0.021 215
Vermont 115 889 0.019 189
Utah 371 804 0.017 166

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called AMES live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called AMES represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called AMES in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a AMES by picking someone at random in Maine than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of AMES

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the AMES surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the AMES surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of AMES in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 599 2.74
Mixed Race 341 1.56
Asian/Pacific 188 0.86
Native American/Alaskan 164 0.75
White (Caucasian) 18,819 86.11
Black/African American 1,744 7.98

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the AMES surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of AMES in historical publications

(origin: French.) From Amie, a friend, beloved; or if from the Hebrew Amos, a burden. Some think it is a contraction of Ambrose (which see). Amesbury in England was originally Ambrosebury.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


AMES. A corrupt spelling, though still retaining the souird, of Exmcs, a town in the department of Orne, in Normandy.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to AMES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as AMES.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for AMES

The following words are slight variants of AMES that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.