The history of your name

The CHARLES surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 51,518 589 0.019 191
United States (1880 census) 7,077 850 0.014 142
Change since 1880 +44441 +261 +0.005 +49
Other Countries
Australia 2,380 677 0.015 146
United Kingdom 10,123 588 0.022 220
Top States for CHARLES by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Florida 6,478 272 0.041 405
New York 6,444 212 0.034 340
Texas 4,537 566 0.022 218
Louisiana 3,200 169 0.072 716
California 2,904 1145 0.009 86
Top States for CHARLES by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Louisiana 3,200 169 0.072 716
Alaska 277 221 0.044 442
Florida 6,478 272 0.041 405
New York 6,444 212 0.034 340
Delaware 249 504 0.032 318

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

Classification and Origin of CHARLES

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 412 0.8
Black/African American 24,358 47.28
White (Caucasian) 20,025 38.87
White (Hispanic) 3,751 7.28
Mixed Race 1,911 3.71
Native American/Alaskan 1,056 2.05

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

Meaning of CHARLES in historical publications

(origin: Ger.) From carl, strong, stout, courageous, and valiant. The Hungarians called a king by the general name Carl, and Scaliger makes Carl-man the same as the Greek ??.

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


CHARLES. 1. The baptismal name. 2. A parish in co. Devon. In H.R. it is found as a surname without pi'cfix.

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 CHARLES

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CHARLES.

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 CHARLES

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