The history of your name

The EMERSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 30,028 1066 0.011 111
United States (1880 census) 8,571 699 0.017 171
Change since 1880 +21457 -367 -0.006 -60
Other Countries
Australia 862 1904 0.005 53
United Kingdom 3,065 2029 0.007 67
Top States for EMERSON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 2,684 1211 0.008 79
Texas 1,946 1287 0.009 93
Florida 1,559 1328 0.010 98
New York 1,221 1488 0.006 64
Washington 1,130 588 0.019 192
Top States for EMERSON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 909 231 0.071 713
Vermont 343 194 0.056 563
New Hampshire 539 282 0.044 436
Arkansas 619 561 0.023 232
Delaware 168 789 0.021 214

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

Classification and Origin of EMERSON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 528 1.76
Native American/Alaskan 453 1.51
Mixed Race 432 1.44
Asian/Pacific 177 0.59
White (Caucasian) 25,902 86.26
Black/African American 2,534 8.44

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

Meaning of EMERSON in historical publications

(origin: Sax.) Emar, from Ethelmar, noble, and son--the son of the noble.

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


Similar names to EMERSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as EMERSON.

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 EMERSON

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