The history of your name

The PENNEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 5,659 5626 0.002 21
United States (1880 census) 1,595 3637 0.003 32
Change since 1880 +4064 -1989 -0.001 -11
Other Countries
Australia 622 2595 0.004 38
United Kingdom 2,675 2321 0.006 58
Top States for PENNEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 590 3742 0.003 28
California 493 5660 0.001 15
Massachusetts 468 1898 0.007 74
Florida 365 5349 0.002 23
Tennessee 245 3118 0.004 43
Top States for PENNEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 242 1034 0.019 190
New Hampshire 134 1448 0.011 108
Massachusetts 468 1898 0.007 74
Tennessee 245 3118 0.004 43
Utah 89 3117 0.004 40

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

Classification and Origin of PENNEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 187 3.3
White (Hispanic) 110 1.94
Mixed Race 76 1.34
Native American/Alaskan 65 1.15
Asian/Pacific 32 0.57
White (Caucasian) 5,189 91.69

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

Meaning of PENNEY in historical publications

PENNEY. See Penny.

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 PENNEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PENNEY.

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 PENNEY

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