The history of your name

The COX surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 253,771 72 0.094 941
United States (1880 census) 59,948 57 0.12 1,199
Change since 1880 +193823 -15 -0.026 -258
Other Countries
Australia 14,404 70 0.088 881
United Kingdom 59,642 69 0.13 1,299
Top States for COX by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 21,885 82 0.105 1,050
California 16,431 146 0.049 485
Florida 13,669 87 0.086 855
North Carolina 13,152 44 0.163 1,634
Ohio 12,542 54 0.110 1,105
Top States for COX by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Tennessee 12,266 36 0.216 2,156
Kentucky 8,295 33 0.205 2,052
Oklahoma 6,495 36 0.188 1,882
South Carolina 7,190 54 0.179 1,792
Arkansas 4,608 44 0.172 1,724

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

Classification and Origin of COX

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 990 0.39
White (Caucasian) 214,386 84.48
Black/African American 29,311 11.55
Mixed Race 3,604 1.42
White (Hispanic) 3,857 1.52
Native American/Alaskan 1,624 0.64

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

Meaning of COX in historical publications

Cock, little--a term of endearment, a diminutive, the same as ot or kin, used as a termination, as Willcox, little Will; Simcox, little Sim, etc. The word is also often used to denote a leader or chief man. Addison says: "Sir Andrew is the cock of the club."

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


COX. COXE. See Eng. Surn. under Cock, i. 165. Probably a sjaionym of Little. It may, however, be the same as Cook, from its latinized form, thus : Cocus, Cocks, Cox.

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 COX

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as COX.

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 COX

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