The history of your name

The BUCHANAN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 63,825 471 0.024 237
United States (1880 census) 12,306 483 0.025 246
Change since 1880 +51519 +12 -0.001 -9
Other Countries
Australia 3,707 398 0.023 227
United Kingdom 10,362 577 0.023 226
Top States for BUCHANAN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 5,004 491 0.024 240
North Carolina 4,558 214 0.057 566
California 4,284 744 0.013 126
Florida 3,724 505 0.023 233
Tennessee 3,406 223 0.060 599
Top States for BUCHANAN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Tennessee 3,406 223 0.060 599
North Carolina 4,558 214 0.057 566
Mississippi 1,352 308 0.048 475
Alabama 1,718 404 0.039 386
Oklahoma 1,274 329 0.037 369

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

Classification and Origin of BUCHANAN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 357 0.56
Asian/Pacific 306 0.48
White (Caucasian) 51,009 79.92
Black/African American 10,155 15.91
Mixed Race 1,002 1.57
White (Hispanic) 1,002 1.57

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

Meaning of BUCHANAN in historical publications

(origin: Local) A parish in the shire of Sterling, Scotland. The derivation of the name is uncertain. It is probably from the same root as Buchan.

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


BUCHANAN. A jparish in co. Stii-ling, possessed by the fomily in early times.

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 BUCHANAN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BUCHANAN.

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 BUCHANAN

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