The history of your name

The DOWNEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 26,206 1225 0.01 97
United States (1880 census) 8,124 741 0.016 162
Change since 1880 +18082 -484 -0.006 -65
Other Countries
Australia 1,377 1193 0.008 84
United Kingdom 4,620 1358 0.01 101
Top States for DOWNEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,898 1743 0.006 56
New York 1,482 1234 0.008 78
Florida 1,388 1490 0.009 87
Massachusetts 1,365 622 0.021 215
Ohio 1,358 975 0.012 120
Top States for DOWNEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 969 627 0.024 240
Massachusetts 1,365 622 0.021 215
Wyoming 79 680 0.016 160
Alabama 710 1061 0.016 160
Montana 139 746 0.015 154

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

Classification and Origin of DOWNEY

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 DOWNEY 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 DOWNEY 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 DOWNEY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 443 1.69
Mixed Race 354 1.35
Native American/Alaskan 225 0.86
Asian/Pacific 136 0.52
White (Caucasian) 23,447 89.47
Black/African American 1,601 6.11

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

Meaning of DOWNEY in historical publications

DOWNEY.

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 DOWNEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as DOWNEY.

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 DOWNEY

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