The FITZ surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	3,649	8343	0.001	14
United States (1880 census)	1,324	4301	0.003	26
Change since 1880	+2325	-4042	-0.002	-12
Other Countries
Australia	82	17019	0.001	5
United Kingdom	106	23454	0	2

Top States for FITZ by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Pennsylvania	393	3660	0.003	32
Ohio	342	3852	0.003	30
California	315	8074	0.001	9
Virginia	203	3886	0.003	29
Florida	198	8930	0.001	12
Top States for FITZ by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Washington DC	20	2783	0.003	35
Vermont	21	4250	0.003	34
South Dakota	25	5002	0.003	33
Maine	42	4083	0.003	33
New Hampshire	40	4005	0.003	32

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

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

Classification and Origin of FITZ

Region of origin: Europe

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

Ethnic distribution of FITZ in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	434	11.89
White (Hispanic)	264	7.23
Mixed Race	33	0.9
Asian/Pacific	13	0.36
Native American/Alaskan	12	0.33
White (Caucasian)	2,893	79.28

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

Meaning of FITZ in historical publications

FITZ. Occurs at the present day as a surname without any addition. This is prohablv local, from the parish of Fitz in Shropshire ; or it may he the Xorman-Fr., Le Fitz, " the Son "—like Cousin, Frere, Brother, &c. Fiz. H.R. |°FITZ. A Norman-French prefix, signifying son, being a corruption of the 'LaimfiUns. Many of the names which occur in Domesday Book v;\i\ijilhis and the father's name in the genitive case, become Fitz in later records. Like AP among the Welsh, and MAC among the Scotch, the Fitz prefixed to the father's name was the only surname in use in many noble families, thus: 1. Bardolf; 2. AkarisFitz-Bardolf; 3. HerveyFitzAkaris ; 4. Henry Fitz-Hervey ; 5. Randolph Fitz-Henry, and so on, down to the time of Edw" III. This succession is found in the family known as FitzHugh, which then became their permanent surname. In general, howe-\-er, this patronymical method was disused at an earlier period. Camden informs us that " King Edward the First, disliking the iteration of Fitz, commanded the Lord John Fitz-Robert, an ancient baron (whose ancestours had continued their surnames by their fathers' Christian names) to leave that manner, and be called John of Claveriug, which was the capital seat of his Barony. And in this time many that had followed this course of naming by Fitz, took them one settled name and retained it." Remains, p. 185. The origin of the word FiTZ, which has so much puzzled some Antiquaries, is this : in coutracting the word fiUus, our old scribes drew a stroke across the '1,' to denote the omission of the following ' i,' and thus assimilated it in form to the letter 't.' The character ' z ' is the usual contraction of ' us.' Thus the word looked like "fz," and came to be so pronounced. FITZ-CLARENCE. This siu-name was given to the natural children of the late Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV. FITZ-ELLTS. The knightly family so named, who flourished at'Waterpyrie near Oxford, sprang from Sir William Alis mentioned in Domesd. The forms are FitzElys, Fitz-Elias, Fitz-Ellis, &c. See Ellis.

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 FITZ

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as FITZ.

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.