The history of your name

The BRIGGS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 57,297 522 0.021 212
United States (1880 census) 20,282 253 0.041 406
Change since 1880 +37015 -269 -0.02 -194
Other Countries
Australia 4,205 349 0.026 257
United Kingdom 17,532 319 0.038 382
Top States for BRIGGS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 4,364 743 0.013 129
New York 3,840 404 0.020 202
Texas 3,569 735 0.017 171
Michigan 3,141 288 0.032 316
Florida 2,958 688 0.019 185
Top States for BRIGGS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 842 263 0.066 660
Vermont 316 229 0.052 519
Idaho 634 211 0.049 490
Rhode Island 497 188 0.047 474
Utah 762 346 0.034 341

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

Classification and Origin of BRIGGS

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 BRIGGS 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 BRIGGS 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 BRIGGS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 940 1.64
White (Hispanic) 825 1.44
Native American/Alaskan 350 0.61
Asian/Pacific 246 0.43
White (Caucasian) 44,629 77.89
Black/African American 10,308 17.99

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

Meaning of BRIGGS in historical publications

From the Anglo-Saxon brigg, a bridge; brig, Welsh, height, the top of any thing.

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


BRIGGS. See Bridge.

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 BRIGGS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as BRIGGS.

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 BRIGGS

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