The history of your name

The GOFF surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 31,806 1001 0.012 118
United States (1880 census) 8,309 722 0.017 166
Change since 1880 +23497 -279 -0.005 -48
Other Countries
Australia 504 3193 0.003 31
United Kingdom 2,558 2409 0.006 56
Top States for GOFF by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 2,262 1124 0.011 108
Florida 2,049 995 0.013 128
California 1,837 1788 0.005 54
South Carolina 1,302 490 0.032 325
Kentucky 1,279 476 0.032 316
Top States for GOFF by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 985 242 0.054 545
Mississippi 1,062 405 0.037 373
South Carolina 1,302 490 0.032 325
Kentucky 1,279 476 0.032 316
Arkansas 724 463 0.027 271

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

Classification and Origin of GOFF

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 GOFF 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 GOFF 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 GOFF in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 515 1.62
Mixed Race 410 1.29
Native American/Alaskan 149 0.47
Asian/Pacific 134 0.42
White (Caucasian) 28,295 88.96
Black/African American 2,306 7.25

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

Meaning of GOFF in historical publications

GOFF. GOFFE. See Gough. When not a corruption of Gough, it is said to signify in the Armoricau dialect " the smith." In the Cornish, Angove has the same meaning, while Trengrove is "strong smith." Queingoff is another Armorican surname meanhig " whitesmith," according to the conjecture of Mr. Dixon. These are all, of course, allied to Gow.

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 GOFF

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GOFF.

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 GOFF

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