The history of your name

The BOWLES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 23,157 1405 0.009 86
United States (1880 census) 6,117 998 0.012 122
Change since 1880 +17040 -407 -0.003 -36
Other Countries
Australia 1,073 1542 0.007 66
United Kingdom 6,125 1024 0.013 133
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 BOWLES

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 368 1.59
White (Hispanic) 368 1.59
Native American/Alaskan 113 0.49
Asian/Pacific 76 0.33
White (Caucasian) 19,063 82.32
Black/African American 3,168 13.68

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

Meaning of BOWLES in historical publications

Probably from the sign of an inn, as "John at the Bowl," i. e., at the sign of the bowl. Boel, local, a town in South Jutland, Denmark. Boel, Dutch, an estate, also one who keeps a mistress.

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


BOWLES. Domesd. presents us with two tenants in chief called Bollo and Bollo, the former in Hants, and the latter in Dorset. Bouelles is the name of a place near Neufchatel in Normand\ Ferguson derives it, and several similar names, from the 0. Norse baidi, a bull, but it is probably local, as De Bolle is found in H.ll.

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 BOWLES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BOWLES.

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 BOWLES

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