The history of your name

The HARRIS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 593,542 24 0.22 2,200
United States (1880 census) 129,736 17 0.259 2,595
Change since 1880 +463806 -7 -0.039 -395
Other Countries
Australia 26,025 15 0.159 1,592
United Kingdom 104,974 24 0.229 2,286
Top States for HARRIS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 45,640 30 0.219 2,189
California 39,832 50 0.118 1,176
Florida 33,897 26 0.212 2,121
Georgia 31,130 10 0.380 3,803
North Carolina 30,265 11 0.376 3,760
Top States for HARRIS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Alabama 22,840 11 0.514 5,136
Mississippi 14,232 10 0.500 5,003
Tennessee 22,494 12 0.395 3,954
Arkansas 10,495 12 0.393 3,926
Washington DC 2,201 11 0.385 3,848

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

Classification and Origin of HARRIS

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 HARRIS 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 HARRIS 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 HARRIS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 319,800 53.88
Black/African American 247,092 41.63
Mixed Race 11,990 2.02
White (Hispanic) 8,606 1.45
Native American/Alaskan 3,858 0.65
Asian/Pacific 2,137 0.36

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

Meaning of HARRIS in historical publications

HARRIS. From Henry, through Harry, and thence Harrison. "It is in recent times only, that a Saxon Harris, equivalent to Harry's son, has been converted into the etymological mongrel of Fltz-Harris, which is almost as startling as Fitz-Harrison or Fitz-Thompson would be." Edinb. Rev., April, 18-55.

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 HARRIS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HARRIS.

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 HARRIS

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