The history of your name

The GERMAN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 14,769 2260 0.005 55
United States (1880 census) 3,364 1819 0.007 67
Change since 1880 +11405 -441 -0.002 -12
Other Countries
Australia 191 7865 0.001 12
United Kingdom 1,295 4254 0.003 28
Top States for GERMAN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,407 2475 0.004 42
New York 1,193 1686 0.006 63
Florida 973 2329 0.006 61
Pennsylvania 821 2020 0.007 67
Texas 807 3144 0.004 39
Top States for GERMAN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
South Dakota 113 834 0.015 150
South Carolina 423 1700 0.011 105
Maryland 548 1220 0.010 103
Alabama 430 1801 0.010 97
North Dakota 59 1869 0.009 92

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

Classification and Origin of GERMAN

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 GERMAN 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 GERMAN 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 GERMAN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 257 1.74
Asian/Pacific 120 0.81
Native American/Alaskan 97 0.66
White (Caucasian) 9,498 64.31
Black/African American 2,075 14.05
White (Hispanic) 2,723 18.44

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

Meaning of GERMAN in historical publications

GERMAN. GERIxUNE. Lat. gerimnus; of the same stock; a near kmsmau ; thus we say cousin-german for first-cousin. As a personal name it is of great antiquity in Britain, dating from St. German, the successful opponent of the Pelagian heresy in the fifth century. Possibly in some mstances it is derived from the country, like French, Irish, &c.

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 GERMAN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GERMAN.

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 GERMAN

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