The history of your name

The HOW surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 708 31014 0 3
United States (1880 census) 1,627 3572 0.003 33
Change since 1880 -919 -27442 +N/A -30
Other Countries
Australia 326 4834 0.002 20
United Kingdom 1,242 4379 0.003 27
Top States for HOW by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 149 13872 0.000 4
Florida 46 28296 0.000 3
New York 46 32688 0.000 2
Texas 39 27764 0.000 2
Missouri 31 16958 0.001 6
Top States for HOW by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Hawaii 15 6043 0.001 12
Nebraska 14 15484 0.001 8
Kansas 21 12181 0.001 8
Oklahoma 21 13179 0.001 6
Montana 5 21879 0.001 6

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

Classification and Origin of HOW

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 HOW 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 HOW 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 HOW in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 415 58.62
Asian/Pacific 233 32.91
White (Hispanic) 23 3.25
Black/African American 21 2.97
Mixed Race Less than 100 Insignificant
Native American/Alaskan Less than 100 Insignificant

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

Meaning of HOW in historical publications

HOW. HOWE. HOWES. In the

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 HOW

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as HOW.

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 HOW

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