The history of your name

The CAREY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 54,924 547 0.02 204
United States (1880 census) 12,983 454 0.026 260
Change since 1880 +41941 -93 -0.006 -56
Other Countries
Australia 3,929 376 0.024 240
United Kingdom 10,991 543 0.024 239
Top States for CAREY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
New York 4,483 327 0.024 236
California 4,098 771 0.012 121
Florida 3,439 549 0.022 215
Pennsylvania 3,175 349 0.026 259
Massachusetts 3,127 219 0.049 493
Top States for CAREY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Delaware 725 110 0.093 925
Maine 643 336 0.050 504
Massachusetts 3,127 219 0.049 493
Vermont 255 311 0.042 419
New Hampshire 431 400 0.035 349

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

Classification and Origin of CAREY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

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

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 840 1.53
White (Hispanic) 785 1.43
Native American/Alaskan 352 0.64
Asian/Pacific 236 0.43
White (Caucasian) 45,702 83.21
Black/African American 7,003 12.75

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

Meaning of CAREY in historical publications

CAREY. The Carews of the West of England pronounce their name as if written Carey, and hence the surnames have been accounted identical. See Anecdote in Eng. Sum. ii. 30. See, however, CarJ

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 CAREY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CAREY.

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 CAREY

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