The history of your name

The CUNNINGHAM surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 131,896 198 0.049 489
United States (1880 census) 34,671 147 0.069 693
Change since 1880 +97225 -51 -0.02 -204
Other Countries
Australia 5,958 226 0.036 364
United Kingdom 26,712 194 0.058 582
Top States for CUNNINGHAM by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 9,279 333 0.027 274
Texas 8,922 266 0.043 428
Ohio 7,940 109 0.070 699
Florida 7,702 216 0.048 482
Pennsylvania 6,492 136 0.053 529
Top States for CUNNINGHAM by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 2,096 76 0.116 1,159
Maine 1,169 152 0.092 917
Tennessee 5,066 133 0.089 890
Alabama 3,677 169 0.083 827
Washington DC 441 108 0.077 771

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

Classification and Origin of CUNNINGHAM

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 CUNNINGHAM 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 CUNNINGHAM 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 CUNNINGHAM in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Native American/Alaskan 620 0.47
Asian/Pacific 541 0.41
White (Caucasian) 99,661 75.56
Black/African American 26,907 20.4
Mixed Race 2,018 1.53
White (Hispanic) 2,150 1.63

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

Meaning of CUNNINGHAM in historical publications

(origin: Local) A district in Ayrshire, Scotland. The name signifies the dwelling of the chief or king, from the Saxon, cyning, Dutch, koning, a leader or chief, and ham, a house or town.

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


CUNNINGHAM. The northern district of Ayrshire, containing many parishes, whence the old earls of Gleucairn. Conyngham and Cunynghame are varieties of this 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 CUNNINGHAM

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as CUNNINGHAM.

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 CUNNINGHAM

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