The history of your name

The BEAR surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 7,672 4278 0.003 28
United States (1880 census) 4,457 1395 0.009 89
Change since 1880 +3215 -2883 -0.006 -61
Other Countries
Australia 451 3531 0.003 28
United Kingdom 524 8549 0.001 11
Top States for BEAR by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 617 4696 0.002 18
Pennsylvania 613 2485 0.005 50
Texas 461 4620 0.002 22
Ohio 446 3175 0.004 39
Florida 408 4946 0.003 26
Top States for BEAR by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
South Dakota 270 210 0.036 358
North Dakota 137 526 0.021 213
Montana 133 780 0.015 147
Alaska 73 1063 0.012 116
Wyoming 48 1226 0.010 97

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

Classification and Origin of BEAR

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 794 10.35
White (Hispanic) 306 3.99
Mixed Race 171 2.23
Black/African American 85 1.11
Asian/Pacific 52 0.68
White (Caucasian) 6,264 81.65

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

Meaning of BEAR in historical publications

BEAR. A gentleman in Kent, some years since, rejoiced in the chi-istian and sur-(or rather ?« -christian and sur-?)names of Savage Bear. Eng. Surn. Although I do not recollect any other instance of this name in modern English, the nomenclature of many European countries, both personal

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 BEAR

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BEAR.

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 BEAR

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