The history of your name

The HANKS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 17,141 1928 0.006 64
United States (1880 census) 3,877 1582 0.008 78
Change since 1880 +13264 -346 -0.002 -14
Other Countries
Australia 355 4458 0.002 22
United Kingdom 2,086 2855 0.005 45
Top States for HANKS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 1,986 1333 0.010 95
Louisiana 1,322 505 0.030 296
California 1,256 2651 0.004 37
Florida 755 2879 0.005 47
Virginia 699 1412 0.010 99
Top States for HANKS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Louisiana 1,322 505 0.030 296
Utah 648 436 0.029 290
Idaho 244 717 0.019 189
Wyoming 82 695 0.017 166
Alabama 624 1241 0.014 140

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

Classification and Origin of HANKS

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 283 1.65
Mixed Race 233 1.36
Native American/Alaskan 233 1.36
Asian/Pacific 55 0.32
White (Caucasian) 14,649 85.46
Black/African American 1,690 9.86

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

Meaning of HANKS in historical publications

A nurse-name, or an abbreviation of John, the "a" being added for "son;" so "Sims," and "Gibbs," etc.

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


HANKS. See Hankin.

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 HANKS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HANKS.

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 HANKS

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