The history of your name

The NEILL surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 8,946 3651 0.003 33
United States (1880 census) 2,173 2775 0.004 43
Change since 1880 +6773 -876 -0.001 -10
Other Countries
Australia 1,295 1268 0.008 79
United Kingdom 5,359 1168 0.012 117
Top States for NEILL by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 1,122 2006 0.005 54
California 758 3714 0.002 22
Florida 470 4047 0.003 29
Pennsylvania 453 3178 0.004 37
Missouri 387 1766 0.007 69
Top States for NEILL by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 59 1742 0.010 97
Montana 67 1642 0.007 74
Delaware 56 2350 0.007 71
Missouri 387 1766 0.007 69
Alaska 43 1830 0.007 69

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

Classification and Origin of NEILL

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Ireland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 176 1.97
Mixed Race 125 1.4
Black/African American 78 0.87
Asian/Pacific 47 0.53
Native American/Alaskan 42 0.47
White (Caucasian) 8,478 94.77

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

Meaning of NEILL in historical publications

MAC NEILL. The house of Macnelll or clan Neill is one of the most ancient of the Western Highlands. Their chiefs, theM.'s of Bara, ranked amongst the ' Principeslnsularum,' who formed the council of state of the Lord of the Isles. They were divided into the two great branches, Macnelll of Gigha, and Macnelll of Barra, the former settled in the south of Arg3deshire, and the latter in Inverness-shire, places so remote from each other that they became practically two distinct clans. B.L.G.

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 NEILL

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as NEILL.

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 NEILL

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