The BREEN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	13,237	2499	0.005	49
United States (1880 census)	3,660	1675	0.007	73
Change since 1880	+9577	-824	-0.002	-24
Other Countries
Australia	1,684	967	0.01	103
United Kingdom	4,534	1382	0.01	99

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

'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.

Classification and Origin of BREEN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Ireland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	852	6.44
White (Hispanic)	204	1.54
Mixed Race	142	1.07
Asian/Pacific	89	0.67
Native American/Alaskan	30	0.23
White (Caucasian)	11,920	90.05

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

Meaning of BREEN in historical publications

BREEN. TlKn in 1607 Hugh ONeill, earl of Tyrone, went into voluntary exile, the government of James I. wished to displace his adherents from Ulster, in order to introduce an English colony there. One of the seven native septs thus dispossessed were banished to the distant county of Kerry, where, to avoid persecution, they dropped the unpopular name of O'Neill, and adopted instead that of Breen, from Braon O'Neill, the head of then- branch. Inf. H. H, Breen, Esq.

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 BREEN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BREEN.

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.