The history of your name

The KNOX surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 42,937 724 0.016 159
United States (1880 census) 12,203 487 0.024 244
Change since 1880 +30734 -237 -0.008 -85
Other Countries
Australia 2,107 767 0.013 129
United Kingdom 8,095 754 0.018 176
Top States for KNOX by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 3,414 984 0.010 101
Texas 3,362 795 0.016 161
Ohio 1,983 655 0.017 175
Florida 1,944 1095 0.012 122
Pennsylvania 1,938 681 0.016 158
Top States for KNOX by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 526 463 0.041 413
Delaware 272 463 0.035 347
South Carolina 1,330 496 0.033 332
Alabama 1,384 551 0.031 311
Tennessee 1,709 523 0.030 300

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

Classification and Origin of KNOX

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 696 1.62
White (Hispanic) 601 1.4
Native American/Alaskan 279 0.65
Asian/Pacific 159 0.37
White (Caucasian) 28,214 65.71
Black/African American 12,988 30.25

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

Meaning of KNOX in historical publications

(origin: Local) Gaelic, Cnoc, a little hill; figuratively, a stout man.

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


KNOX. From the lands of Knocks or Knox, CO. Renfrew. Knock, Gael., a roundtopped hill. The Knoxes were of that Ilk at an early period, and sometimes wrote themselves of Ranfurly, whence the family of Knox, Earls of Ranfurly in Ireland. The great Reformer was of this family.

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 KNOX

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as KNOX.

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 KNOX

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