The history of your name

The PORTEOUS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 904 25633 0 3
United States (1880 census) 133 25814 0 3
Change since 1880 +771 +181 +N/A 0
Other Countries
Australia 566 2862 0.003 35
United Kingdom 2,423 2519 0.005 53
Top States for PORTEOUS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 230 10288 0.001 7
New York 70 23951 0.000 4
Michigan 64 17834 0.001 6
Florida 62 23750 0.000 4
Texas 45 26444 0.000 2
Top States for PORTEOUS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Louisiana 41 9950 0.001 9
Vermont 5 14186 0.001 8
Montana 7 17298 0.001 8
California 230 10288 0.001 7
Nevada 13 16621 0.001 7

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

Classification and Origin of PORTEOUS

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Occupational Name

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 783 86.62
Black/African American 73 8.08
White (Hispanic) 27 2.99
Mixed Race 10 1.11
Asian/Pacific Less than 100 Insignificant
Native American/Alaskan Less than 100 Insignificant

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

Meaning of PORTEOUS in historical publications

PORTEUS. PORTEOUS. 1. A porteus is a Roman breviar)', or priest's officebook. The surname may be classed with Crucifix, Pix, &c. 2. In Scotland, a porteous is a " list of iersons indicted to appear before the Justiciary ;" and portuous roll is a phrase still used to denote the list of criminal causes to be tried at the circuit courts. Jamieson. Hence the name may have originated from some office connected with such courts. The family of this name boast, that they have been seated at Hawkshaw, in Peebles-shire, a whole Millennium !

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 PORTEOUS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PORTEOUS.

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 PORTEOUS

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