The history of your name

The DEWEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 12,174 2716 0.005 45
United States (1880 census) 5,085 1203 0.01 102
Change since 1880 +7089 -1513 -0.005 -57
Other Countries
Australia 163 9081 0.001 10
United Kingdom 1,534 3679 0.003 33
Top States for DEWEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 991 3106 0.003 29
Michigan 965 1081 0.010 97
New York 921 1977 0.005 49
Florida 666 3044 0.004 42
Ohio 584 2347 0.005 51
Top States for DEWEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Wyoming 75 708 0.015 152
Vermont 88 1211 0.014 145
Idaho 154 1108 0.012 119
Michigan 965 1081 0.010 97
Oregon 325 1257 0.009 95

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

Classification and Origin of DEWEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 213 1.75
Native American/Alaskan 205 1.68
Mixed Race 178 1.46
White (Hispanic) 146 1.2
Asian/Pacific 63 0.52
White (Caucasian) 11,369 93.39

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

Meaning of DEWEY in historical publications

Dewi, in the Welsh, is a contraction or rather a corruption of David.

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


DEWEY. Walter de Dounai was a sreat

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 DEWEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as DEWEY.

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 DEWEY

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