The history of your name

The HARVEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 112,136 247 0.042 416
United States (1880 census) 25,504 200 0.051 510
Change since 1880 +86632 -47 -0.009 -94
Other Countries
Australia 11,721 88 0.072 717
United Kingdom 44,856 96 0.098 977
Top States for HARVEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 8,203 394 0.024 242
Texas 7,865 315 0.038 377
Florida 7,522 228 0.047 471
Pennsylvania 5,310 191 0.043 432
New York 5,128 295 0.027 270
Top States for HARVEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 1,159 162 0.091 909
West Virginia 1,608 118 0.089 889
Mississippi 2,265 171 0.080 796
Wyoming 326 117 0.066 660
Tennessee 3,697 212 0.065 650

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

Classification and Origin of HARVEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 460 0.41
White (Caucasian) 79,280 70.7
Black/African American 27,036 24.11
Mixed Race 1,850 1.65
Native American/Alaskan 1,749 1.56
White (Hispanic) 1,772 1.58

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

Meaning of HARVEY in historical publications

HARVEY. HERVEY. An ancient Nonnan personal name — TTerve. M. de Gerville in Mem. Soc. Aut. Norm., 1844, observes : " We sometimes call it Hervot . . La Hervurie signifies the habitation of Herve." As a family designation it appears in England in the XII. cent. Osbert de Hervey is styled, in the register of St. Edmundsbury, the sou of Hervey. From him according to the Peerage sprang the Herveys, ennobled in England and Ireland, and also (in all probability, from the resemblance of their arms) the De Hervi's and Hervies of Aberdeenshire and other parts of Scotland.

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 HARVEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HARVEY.

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 HARVEY

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