The JAMES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	233,224	80	0.086	865
United States (1880 census)	49,532	77	0.099	991
Change since 1880	+183692	-3	-0.013	-126
Other Countries
Australia	16,967	57	0.104	1,038
United Kingdom	77,846	46	0.169	1,695

Top States for JAMES by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Texas	17,812	112	0.085	854
California	16,615	157	0.049	491
Florida	15,251	81	0.095	954
New York	12,197	78	0.064	643
Georgia	10,601	62	0.129	1,295
Top States for JAMES by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
South Carolina	7,654	53	0.191	1,908
Louisiana	8,399	46	0.188	1,879
Mississippi	5,114	53	0.180	1,798
Alabama	7,384	69	0.166	1,660
Arkansas	3,973	59	0.149	1,486

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

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

Classification and Origin of JAMES

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Wales

Language of origin: Welsh

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

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

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Caucasian)	126,990	54.45
Black/African American	88,835	38.09
Native American/Alaskan	5,854	2.51
Mixed Race	4,898	2.1
White (Hispanic)	4,758	2.04
Asian/Pacific	1,889	0.81

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

Similar names to JAMES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as JAMES.

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.