The history of your name

The CATO surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 7,940 4125 0.003 29
United States (1880 census) 1,695 3457 0.003 34
Change since 1880 +6245 -668 0 -5
Other Countries
Australia 267 5791 0.002 16
United Kingdom 861 5926 0.002 19
Top States for CATO by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Georgia 981 1176 0.012 120
Texas 770 3206 0.004 37
South Carolina 634 1124 0.016 158
Florida 623 3560 0.004 39
California 554 5508 0.002 16
Top States for CATO by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
South Carolina 634 1124 0.016 158
Georgia 981 1176 0.012 120
Arkansas 276 1380 0.010 103
Alabama 326 2211 0.007 73
Louisiana 273 2371 0.006 61

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

Classification and Origin of CATO

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 206 2.59
Mixed Race 159 2
Asian/Pacific 70 0.88
Native American/Alaskan 56 0.71
White (Caucasian) 4,626 58.26
Black/African American 2,823 35.55

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

Meaning of CATO in historical publications

CATO. An old Germ. name. Ferguson.

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 CATO

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CATO.

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 CATO

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