The history of your name

The CULLEN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 19,665 1665 0.007 73
United States (1880 census) 6,332 964 0.013 127
Change since 1880 +13333 -701 -0.006 -54
Other Countries
Australia 4,025 369 0.025 246
United Kingdom 11,736 503 0.026 256
Top States for CULLEN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
New York 2,098 779 0.011 111
California 1,760 1785 0.005 52
Florida 1,423 1395 0.009 89
Massachusetts 1,302 625 0.021 205
Pennsylvania 1,159 1164 0.009 94
Top States for CULLEN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
New Hampshire 301 591 0.024 244
Delaware 170 753 0.022 217
Massachusetts 1,302 625 0.021 205
Rhode Island 183 764 0.017 175
Connecticut 454 842 0.013 133

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

Classification and Origin of CULLEN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Ireland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 340 1.73
White (Hispanic) 299 1.52
Mixed Race 273 1.39
Asian/Pacific 191 0.97
Native American/Alaskan 61 0.31
White (Caucasian) 18,503 94.09

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

Meaning of CULLEN in historical publications

(origin: Local) From the town of Cullen, in Banffshire, Scotland. The derivation is uncertain. It may be from Cuillean, holly, a place of holly-trees; or Cullin, the place at the neck of the lake, from Cul, a neck, the back of any thing, and lin, a lake, a pond.

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


CULLEN. 1. Irish. See Cuillean. 2. An old spelling of Cologne.

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 CULLEN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CULLEN.

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 CULLEN

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