The history of your name

The ADAMS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 413,086 39 0.153 1,531
United States (1880 census) 97,447 31 0.195 1,949
Change since 1880 +315639 -8 -0.042 -418
Other Countries
Australia 15,018 66 0.092 919
United Kingdom 58,923 70 0.128 1,283
Top States for ADAMS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 30,866 50 0.148 1,480
California 28,487 73 0.084 841
Florida 24,694 43 0.155 1,545
Ohio 20,416 25 0.180 1,798
Georgia 19,352 27 0.236 2,364
Top States for ADAMS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 12,186 16 0.302 3,015
Alabama 11,910 33 0.268 2,678
Louisiana 11,417 30 0.255 2,555
South Carolina 9,970 30 0.249 2,485
Georgia 19,352 27 0.236 2,364

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

Classification and Origin of ADAMS

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 314,648 76.17
Black/African American 79,313 19.2
White (Hispanic) 7,270 1.76
Mixed Race 6,733 1.63
Native American/Alaskan 3,263 0.79
Asian/Pacific 1,859 0.45

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

Meaning of ADAMS in historical publications

ADAM. ADAMS. ADAMSOX. The

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 ADAMS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as ADAMS.

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 ADAMS

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