The history of your name

The CARTER surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 362,548 46 0.134 1,344
United States (1880 census) 83,935 35 0.168 1,679
Change since 1880 +278613 -11 -0.034 -335
Other Countries
Australia 14,148 72 0.087 865
United Kingdom 64,575 64 0.141 1,406
Top States for CARTER by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 27,174 66 0.130 1,303
California 23,351 96 0.069 689
Florida 22,157 51 0.139 1,386
Georgia 21,190 25 0.259 2,588
North Carolina 18,347 29 0.228 2,279
Top States for CARTER by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Mississippi 8,343 28 0.293 2,933
Tennessee 15,019 27 0.264 2,640
Alabama 11,578 35 0.260 2,603
Georgia 21,190 25 0.259 2,588
Virginia 18,299 21 0.259 2,585

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

Classification and Origin of CARTER

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Occupational Name

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 219,378 60.51
Black/African American 126,856 34.99
Mixed Race 6,816 1.88
White (Hispanic) 5,511 1.52
Native American/Alaskan 2,574 0.71
Asian/Pacific 1,414 0.39

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

Meaning of CARTER in historical publications

A name of trade, one who drives a cart. Cairtear, Gaelic, a tourist, a sojourner.

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


CARTER. The occupation — a driver of carts. In medieval documents Carectariua and Le Carectar,

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 CARTER

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CARTER.

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 CARTER

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