The history of your name

The PUTNAM surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 17,990 1831 0.007 67
United States (1880 census) 6,219 982 0.012 124
Change since 1880 +11771 -849 -0.005 -57
Other Countries
Australia 50 25380 0 3
United Kingdom 505 8789 0.001 11
Top States for PUTNAM by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,420 2130 0.004 42
North Carolina 1,219 930 0.015 151
New York 1,150 1510 0.006 61
Florida 971 2016 0.006 61
Michigan 910 1120 0.009 92
Top States for PUTNAM by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 268 271 0.044 440
New Hampshire 424 386 0.034 343
Maine 401 595 0.031 315
South Carolina 628 991 0.016 157
North Carolina 1,219 930 0.015 151

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

Classification and Origin of PUTNAM

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 266 1.48
White (Hispanic) 219 1.22
Mixed Race 192 1.07
Asian/Pacific 92 0.51
Native American/Alaskan 65 0.36
White (Caucasian) 17,159 95.38

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

Meaning of PUTNAM in historical publications

(origin: Dutch.) From Put or Putten, a well, and ham, a house or town. Welltown, or the house by the well.

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


PUTNAM. Puttenham, parishes in cos. Hertford and Surrey.

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 PUTNAM

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PUTNAM.

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 PUTNAM

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