The history of your name

The NICHOLSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 55,986 534 0.021 208
United States (1880 census) 10,517 565 0.021 210
Change since 1880 +45469 +31 0 -2
Other Countries
Australia 5,598 248 0.034 342
United Kingdom 27,404 187 0.06 597
Top States for NICHOLSON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 3,907 824 0.012 115
Texas 3,423 760 0.016 164
Florida 3,244 598 0.020 203
North Carolina 2,933 372 0.036 364
Pennsylvania 2,692 429 0.022 219
Top States for NICHOLSON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Mississippi 1,204 346 0.042 423
West Virginia 727 356 0.040 402
South Carolina 1,526 408 0.038 380
North Carolina 2,933 372 0.036 364
Alabama 1,492 490 0.034 335

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

Classification and Origin of NICHOLSON

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 NICHOLSON 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 NICHOLSON 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 NICHOLSON in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 913 1.63
White (Hispanic) 907 1.62
Native American/Alaskan 336 0.6
Asian/Pacific 230 0.41
White (Caucasian) 43,109 77
Black/African American 10,492 18.74

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

Meaning of NICHOLSON in historical publications

NICHOLSON. The son of Nicholas. Most families of this name trace to the counties of Northumberland aud Cumberland. It is not improbable that they are descended from the great Anglo-Norman family of Fitz-Nigell or Nicholl. See Nicholl.

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 NICHOLSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as NICHOLSON.

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 NICHOLSON

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