The history of your name

The PURNELL surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 7,725 4243 0.003 29
United States (1880 census) 2,245 2695 0.004 45
Change since 1880 +5480 -1548 -0.001 -16
Other Countries
Australia 635 2540 0.004 39
United Kingdom 2,835 2188 0.006 62
Top States for PURNELL by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maryland 1,039 559 0.020 196
Pennsylvania 711 2251 0.006 58
Illinois 580 2332 0.005 47
California 404 7185 0.001 12
Mississippi 339 1330 0.012 119
Top States for PURNELL by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Delaware 332 367 0.042 424
Maryland 1,039 559 0.020 196
Mississippi 339 1330 0.012 119
Pennsylvania 711 2251 0.006 58
Washington DC 32 2037 0.006 56

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

Classification and Origin of PURNELL

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

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

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 154 1.99
White (Hispanic) 104 1.35
Asian/Pacific 26 0.34
Native American/Alaskan 17 0.22
Black/African American 4,761 61.63
White (Caucasian) 2,663 34.47

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

Meaning of PURNELL in historical publications

PURNELL. May be the same as

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 PURNELL

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PURNELL.

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 PURNELL

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