The history of your name

The IRELAND surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 14,168 2342 0.005 52
United States (1880 census) 4,727 1321 0.009 95
Change since 1880 +9441 -1021 -0.004 -43
Other Countries
Australia 3,060 505 0.019 187
United Kingdom 8,687 700 0.019 189
Top States for IRELAND by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,093 2757 0.003 32
Florida 931 2127 0.006 58
New York 663 2785 0.003 35
Michigan 650 1659 0.007 65
Pennsylvania 650 2246 0.005 53
Top States for IRELAND by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 618 337 0.048 485
Idaho 169 960 0.013 131
New Hampshire 159 1178 0.013 129
Alaska 70 1067 0.011 112
South Dakota 84 1081 0.011 111

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

Classification and Origin of IRELAND

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 IRELAND 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 IRELAND 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 IRELAND in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 903 6.37
Mixed Race 196 1.38
White (Hispanic) 170 1.2
Native American/Alaskan 72 0.51
Asian/Pacific 45 0.32
White (Caucasian) 12,782 90.22

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

Meaning of IRELAND in historical publications

A name given to a native of that island. Ireland signifies West-land, from the Gaelic Iar, the West, and the Teutonic land, Welsh, Llan, a clear place, a lawn.

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


Similar names to IRELAND

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as IRELAND.

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 IRELAND

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