The history of your name

The FERGUSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 142,256 173 0.053 527
United States (1880 census) 21,604 237 0.043 432
Change since 1880 +120652 +64 +0.01 +95
Other Countries
Australia 9,982 112 0.061 611
United Kingdom 30,429 160 0.066 663
Top States for FERGUSON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 11,512 197 0.055 552
California 9,879 307 0.029 292
Florida 8,797 178 0.055 550
Ohio 7,724 114 0.068 680
Virginia 5,977 97 0.084 844
Top States for FERGUSON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 1,668 110 0.092 922
South Carolina 3,543 142 0.088 883
Virginia 5,977 97 0.084 844
Tennessee 4,681 154 0.082 823
Mississippi 2,296 163 0.081 807

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

Classification and Origin of FERGUSON

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 FERGUSON 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 FERGUSON 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 FERGUSON in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 854 0.6
Asian/Pacific 626 0.44
White (Caucasian) 110,305 77.54
Black/African American 25,677 18.05
Mixed Race 2,361 1.66
White (Hispanic) 2,433 1.71

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

Meaning of FERGUSON in historical publications

FERGUSSON. FERGUSON. The son

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 FERGUSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as FERGUSON.

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 FERGUSON

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