The COMMON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	648	33248	0	2
United States (1880 census)	117	28306	0	2
Change since 1880	+531	-4942	+N/A	0
Other Countries
Australia	40	30564	0	2
United Kingdom	680	7072	0.001	15

Top States for COMMON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Illinois	78	15770	0.001	6
Ohio	73	16228	0.001	6
California	70	29371	0.000	2
Michigan	60	19305	0.001	6
New York	39	41688	0.000	2
Top States for COMMON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
North Dakota	16	6441	0.002	25
Ohio	73	16228	0.001	6
Illinois	78	15770	0.001	6
Michigan	60	19305	0.001	6
Mississippi	16	10138	0.001	6

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

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

Classification and Origin of COMMON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Caucasian)	410	63.27
Black/African American	225	34.72
White (Hispanic)	7	1.08
Asian/Pacific	Less than 100	Insignificant
Mixed Race	Less than 100	Insignificant
Native American/Alaskan	Less than 100	0

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

Similar names to COMMON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as COMMON.

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.