The history of your name

The ESSEX surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 3,616 8401 0.001 13
United States (1880 census) 1,025 5343 0.002 21
Change since 1880 +2591 -3058 -0.001 -8
Other Countries
Australia 342 4621 0.002 21
United Kingdom 1,468 3831 0.003 32
Top States for ESSEX by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 326 8073 0.001 10
Michigan 289 4054 0.003 29
Ohio 272 5017 0.002 24
Illinois 237 5403 0.002 19
Indiana 233 3236 0.004 38
Top States for ESSEX by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Rhode Island 42 3686 0.004 40
Indiana 233 3236 0.004 38
Michigan 289 4054 0.003 29
Iowa 82 5259 0.003 28
Montana 24 5787 0.003 27

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

Classification and Origin of ESSEX

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 ESSEX 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 ESSEX 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 ESSEX in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 810 22.4
Mixed Race 49 1.36
White (Hispanic) 47 1.3
Native American/Alaskan 15 0.41
Asian/Pacific 7 0.19
White (Caucasian) 2,688 74.34

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

Meaning of ESSEX in historical publications

ESSEX. The county. One Swain of Essex was a tenant in chief in co. Huntingdon at the making of Domesday. Henry de Essexia, probably his descendant, was a powerful, but at length an unfortunate baron, temp. Henry 11. See Chronicle of Battel Abbe}, p. 95.

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 ESSEX

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as ESSEX.

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 ESSEX

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