The history of your name

The HOLMES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 150,166 161 0.056 557
United States (1880 census) 36,943 130 0.074 739
Change since 1880 +113223 -31 -0.018 -182
Other Countries
Australia 8,992 129 0.055 550
United Kingdom 48,582 85 0.106 1,058
Top States for HOLMES by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 10,513 287 0.031 310
Texas 10,399 233 0.050 499
Florida 9,338 168 0.058 584
New York 6,895 194 0.036 363
Georgia 6,670 128 0.081 815
Top States for HOLMES by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Mississippi 3,971 88 0.140 1,396
South Carolina 5,160 92 0.129 1,286
Washington DC 633 70 0.111 1,107
Alabama 4,709 121 0.106 1,059
Louisiana 4,537 109 0.102 1,015

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

Classification and Origin of HOLMES

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 HOLMES 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 HOLMES 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 HOLMES in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 466 0.31
White (Caucasian) 88,928 59.22
Black/African American 54,841 36.52
Mixed Race 2,583 1.72
White (Hispanic) 2,252 1.5
Native American/Alaskan 1,096 0.73

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

Meaning of HOLMES in historical publications

HOLMES. A holme is defined by Halliwell as ' flat laud ; a small island ; a deposit of soil at the confluence of two waters. Flat gi'ounds near water are called holms.'

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 HOLMES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HOLMES.

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 HOLMES

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