The history of your name

The RALSTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 12,076 2743 0.004 45
United States (1880 census) 3,641 1684 0.007 73
Change since 1880 +8435 -1059 -0.003 -28
Other Countries
Australia 839 1948 0.005 51
United Kingdom 1,507 3733 0.003 33
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.

Classification and Origin of RALSTON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 370 3.06
White (Hispanic) 200 1.66
Mixed Race 156 1.29
Native American/Alaskan 85 0.7
Asian/Pacific 71 0.59
White (Caucasian) 11,194 92.7

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

Meaning of RALSTON in historical publications

(origin: Local) Ralph, one of the descendants of Mac Duff, Thane of Fife, obtained a grant of land in Renfrewshire, and, as was common in those days, called he place after himself, Ralphstown, which was softened into Ralston.

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


RALSTON. The Ralstons "of that Ilk" are descended from the Mac Duffs, Thanes or Earls of Fife, one of whom had a son Ralph. The latter, obtaining a grant of lands in Renfrewshire, called them after his own name, Ralphs-toune. In process of time, his descendants, continuing on the same estate, wrote themselves De Ralphs

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 RALSTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as RALSTON.

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 RALSTON

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