The history of your name

The COWAN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 32,242 985 0.012 120
United States (1880 census) 7,925 760 0.016 159
Change since 1880 +24317 -225 -0.004 -39
Other Countries
Australia 2,565 619 0.016 157
United Kingdom 10,542 564 0.023 230
Top States for COWAN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 3,088 1063 0.009 91
Texas 2,679 970 0.013 128
Florida 1,668 1248 0.010 104
Tennessee 1,639 529 0.029 288
North Carolina 1,451 809 0.018 180
Top States for COWAN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Oklahoma 1,135 388 0.033 329
Tennessee 1,639 529 0.029 288
Alabama 1,002 751 0.023 225
Utah 437 666 0.020 196
Maine 240 1069 0.019 188

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

Classification and Origin of COWAN

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 COWAN 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 COWAN 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 COWAN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 500 1.55
Mixed Race 448 1.39
Native American/Alaskan 187 0.58
Asian/Pacific 135 0.42
White (Caucasian) 26,332 81.67
Black/African American 4,636 14.38

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

Meaning of COWAN in historical publications

(origin: Gaelic.) Gobhainn, a smith; Gowan, a Scottish word for a wild flower.

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


COWAN. Probably a corruption of Colban, an ancient Celtic name, since Colbanstoun in the S. of Scotl. was corrupted to Cowanstoun.

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 COWAN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as COWAN.

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 COWAN

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