The history of your name

The HAMILTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 194,331 107 0.072 720
United States (1880 census) 48,826 79 0.098 977
Change since 1880 +145505 -28 -0.026 -257
Other Countries
Australia 11,098 95 0.068 679
United Kingdom 39,633 111 0.086 863
Top States for HAMILTON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 15,236 134 0.073 731
California 14,909 177 0.044 440
Florida 12,681 103 0.079 793
Ohio 10,319 70 0.091 909
New York 8,204 147 0.043 432
Top States for HAMILTON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 6,319 50 0.156 1,563
Alabama 4,978 106 0.112 1,119
Oklahoma 3,855 82 0.112 1,117
South Carolina 4,240 118 0.106 1,057
Arkansas 2,716 97 0.102 1,016

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

Classification and Origin of HAMILTON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 855 0.44
White (Caucasian) 141,454 72.79
Black/African American 44,016 22.65
Mixed Race 3,362 1.73
White (Hispanic) 3,129 1.61
Native American/Alaskan 1,516 0.78

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

Meaning of HAMILTON in historical publications

Originally Hambleton, from the manor of Hambleton, in Buckinghamshire. William, third son of Robert, third Earl of Leicester, took that surname from the place of his birth, as above. He was the founder of the family of that name in Scotland, whither he went about the year 1215. The name is derived from Hamell, a mansion, the seat of a freeholder, and dun, an enclosure, a fortified place, a town.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


Similar names to HAMILTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HAMILTON.

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 HAMILTON

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