The history of your name

The COLE surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 187,793 116 0.07 696
United States (1880 census) 52,008 72 0.104 1,040
Change since 1880 +135785 -44 -0.034 -344
Other Countries
Australia 7,857 159 0.048 481
United Kingdom 35,646 130 0.078 776
Top States for COLE by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 13,259 205 0.039 391
Texas 13,006 165 0.062 624
Florida 10,166 143 0.064 636
Michigan 9,600 53 0.097 966
Ohio 8,869 91 0.078 781
Top States for COLE by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 1,927 61 0.151 1,511
Tennessee 8,068 70 0.142 1,418
Alabama 5,558 93 0.125 1,250
Mississippi 3,499 98 0.123 1,230
Oklahoma 4,203 66 0.122 1,218

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

Classification and Origin of COLE

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 808 0.43
White (Caucasian) 145,709 77.59
Black/African American 34,178 18.2
Mixed Race 3,023 1.61
White (Hispanic) 2,779 1.48
Native American/Alaskan 1,277 0.68

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

Meaning of COLE in historical publications

An abbreviation of Nicholas, common among the Dutch.

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


COLE. Places in cos. "Wilts and Somerset. Also a very ancient Teutonic personal name. In Domesd. it ajpears as a baptismal — in the H.R. as a family name.

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 COLE

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as COLE.

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 COLE

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