The history of your name

The FOX surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 147,357 167 0.055 546
United States (1880 census) 39,820 117 0.08 796
Change since 1880 +107537 -50 -0.025 -250
Other Countries
Australia 7,259 176 0.044 444
United Kingdom 38,876 115 0.085 846
Top States for FOX by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 11,509 231 0.034 340
Pennsylvania 9,258 65 0.075 754
Ohio 8,994 76 0.079 792
New York 8,810 113 0.046 464
Florida 8,579 167 0.054 537
Top States for FOX by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 1,647 103 0.091 911
Tennessee 4,631 137 0.081 814
Ohio 8,994 76 0.079 792
Delaware 618 142 0.079 789
North Carolina 6,198 127 0.077 770

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

Classification and Origin of FOX

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Nickname

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 810 0.55
White (Caucasian) 132,356 89.82
Black/African American 8,370 5.68
Mixed Race 2,048 1.39
White (Hispanic) 2,269 1.54
Native American/Alaskan 1,518 1.03

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

Meaning of FOX in historical publications

A name taken from the cunning animal; about the year 1333 the Shanachs in Ireland anglicised their name to Fox.

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


FOX. FOXE. 1. From the animal, like Wolf, Bear, Boar, kc. Le Fox. H.R.

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 FOX

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as FOX.

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 FOX

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