The history of your name

The BLAKE surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 69,279 425 0.026 257
United States (1880 census) 20,011 260 0.04 400
Change since 1880 +49268 -165 -0.014 -143
Other Countries
Australia 5,074 276 0.031 310
United Kingdom 20,106 274 0.044 438
Top States for BLAKE by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 4,835 675 0.014 143
Florida 4,631 392 0.029 290
New York 4,257 368 0.022 224
Texas 3,942 651 0.019 189
Ohio 3,482 335 0.031 307
Top States for BLAKE by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 1,841 97 0.102 1,018
Maine 1,105 177 0.087 867
Vermont 468 118 0.077 769
New Hampshire 800 161 0.065 647
Maryland 2,228 225 0.042 421

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

Classification and Origin of BLAKE

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 BLAKE 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 BLAKE 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 BLAKE in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 540 0.78
Asian/Pacific 291 0.42
White (Caucasian) 51,294 74.04
Black/African American 14,625 21.11
Mixed Race 1,233 1.78
White (Hispanic) 1,289 1.86

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

Meaning of BLAKE in historical publications

A corruption of the British Ap Lake, from Ap, signifying from, or son, and Lake,--the son of Lake. The family went into Ireland with Strongbow, where the name became corrupted into Blake. Ap Lake was one of the knights of Arthur's Round Table.

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


BLAKE. ''Bleke, wan of colour," Palsgr. A- Sax. Mccc, Mac, pallidus — a person of pale complexion. The Blalces of Ireland descend from Richard B., who accompanied Prince John to tliat country in 1185, and settled in co. Galway.

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 BLAKE

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BLAKE.

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 BLAKE

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