The history of your name

The GRAHAM surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 194,074 108 0.072 719
United States (1880 census) 46,417 87 0.093 928
Change since 1880 +147657 -21 -0.021 -209
Other Countries
Australia 15,015 67 0.092 919
United Kingdom 57,276 72 0.125 1,247
Top States for GRAHAM by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 14,096 187 0.042 416
Texas 13,561 158 0.065 650
Florida 12,769 100 0.080 799
Pennsylvania 9,235 74 0.075 752
North Carolina 9,233 76 0.115 1,147
Top States for GRAHAM by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
South Carolina 7,528 52 0.188 1,876
Mississippi 4,083 74 0.144 1,435
North Carolina 9,233 76 0.115 1,147
Alabama 5,036 102 0.113 1,132
Oklahoma 3,871 78 0.112 1,122

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

Classification and Origin of GRAHAM

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 GRAHAM 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 GRAHAM 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 GRAHAM in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 815 0.42
White (Caucasian) 141,364 72.84
Black/African American 44,094 22.72
Mixed Race 3,125 1.61
White (Hispanic) 3,183 1.64
Native American/Alaskan 1,494 0.77

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

Meaning of GRAHAM in historical publications

GRAHAM. The name h;>s always been written interchangeably with Gramme — the Scottish oi'thography. The earliest traceable ancestor, (for we reject of course the fifth-century hero Greme — See Gramie,) is AVilliam de GRAHA,\r, wlio settled in Scotland early in the XII. century. The surname therefore is clearly local, and from its termination undoubtedly English. The onlv place in S. Britain of the name which we find is Graham, near Kesteveu in Lincolnshire. H.R., vol. i., page 288.

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 GRAHAM

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GRAHAM.

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 GRAHAM

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