The history of your name

The ARTHUR surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 27,383 1172 0.01 102
United States (1880 census) 5,670 1077 0.011 113
Change since 1880 +21713 -95 -0.001 -11
Other Countries
Australia 2,871 545 0.018 176
United Kingdom 7,226 861 0.016 157
Top States for ARTHUR by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Ohio 1,853 690 0.016 163
California 1,766 1860 0.005 52
Virginia 1,741 496 0.025 246
Texas 1,737 1444 0.008 83
Florida 1,728 1214 0.011 108
Top States for ARTHUR by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 942 263 0.052 521
Virginia 1,741 496 0.025 246
Indiana 1,402 481 0.023 231
South Carolina 763 860 0.019 190
Montana 151 679 0.017 167

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

Classification and Origin of ARTHUR

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the ARTHUR 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 ARTHUR 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 ARTHUR in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 515 1.88
Mixed Race 466 1.7
White (Hispanic) 411 1.5
Asian/Pacific 183 0.67
White (Caucasian) 21,964 80.21
Black/African American 3,842 14.03

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

Meaning of ARTHUR in historical publications

(origin: British.) A strong man; from Ar (Lat. vir), a man, and thor, strong. In the Gaelic, Air is the same as Fear, a man; and the ancient Scythians called a man Aior. Thor was the Jupiter of the Teutonic races, their god of thunder. In Welsh, Arth is a bear, an emblem of strength and courage, and ur a noun termination, a man. Arthur, a bear-man, a hero, a man of strength; the name of a British prince.

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


ARTHUR. The Christian name. Other surnames from it are Atty, Atts, Atkin, Atkins, Atkinson, Atcock. Aikin and Aitkin may be northern varieties.

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 ARTHUR

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as ARTHUR.

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 ARTHUR

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