The history of your name

The CLIFTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 24,523 1320 0.009 91
United States (1880 census) 5,086 1202 0.01 102
Change since 1880 +19437 -118 -0.001 -11
Other Countries
Australia 1,720 943 0.011 105
United Kingdom 5,677 1102 0.012 124
Top States for CLIFTON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 2,690 1007 0.013 129
California 1,680 2006 0.005 50
Florida 1,524 1423 0.010 95
North Carolina 1,443 861 0.018 179
Ohio 1,167 1194 0.010 103
Top States for CLIFTON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Delaware 231 575 0.029 295
Alabama 955 819 0.021 215
Oklahoma 714 679 0.021 207
Tennessee 1,106 823 0.019 194
Arkansas 486 751 0.018 182

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

Classification and Origin of CLIFTON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 392 1.6
Mixed Race 375 1.53
Native American/Alaskan 152 0.62
Asian/Pacific 81 0.33
White (Caucasian) 20,455 83.41
Black/African American 3,068 12.51

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

Meaning of CLIFTON in historical publications

(origin: Local) A small village in England; the town on the cliff.

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


CLIFTON. Parishes, &c., in many counties. The Cliftons of Clifton, co. Lancaster, have possessed that estate for more than six centuries.

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 CLIFTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CLIFTON.

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 CLIFTON

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