The history of your name

The GOODWILL surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 1,459 17710 0.001 5
United States (1880 census) 244 16652 0 5
Change since 1880 +1215 -1058 +N/A 0
Other Countries
Australia 86 16298 0.001 5
United Kingdom 633 7479 0.001 14
Top States for GOODWILL by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Pennsylvania 217 7246 0.002 18
New York 138 14299 0.001 7
Texas 115 14326 0.001 6
California 114 21327 0.000 3
Ohio 105 12872 0.001 9
Top States for GOODWILL by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Pennsylvania 217 7246 0.002 18
Nevada 34 7052 0.002 17
North Dakota 10 10882 0.002 16
Delaware 11 12237 0.001 14
Louisiana 43 10548 0.001 10

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

Classification and Origin of GOODWILL

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 265 18.16
White (Hispanic) 32 2.19
Mixed Race 27 1.85
Native American/Alaskan 18 1.23
Asian/Pacific 8 0.55
White (Caucasian) 1,109 76.01

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

Meaning of GOODWILL in historical publications

GOODWILL. GOODWILLIE. These singular names have no reference to the character, good or bad, of any of the vast Gulielmian tribe, but, according to Pittscottie, a good-wilier and a well-wisher are synonymous. Jamieson.

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 GOODWILL

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GOODWILL.

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 GOODWILL

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