The history of your name

The IRISH surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 7,192 4533 0.003 27
United States (1880 census) 2,486 2442 0.005 50
Change since 1880 +4706 -2091 -0.002 -23
Other Countries
Australia 199 7569 0.001 12
United Kingdom 1,078 4945 0.002 23
Top States for IRISH by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Michigan 699 1548 0.007 70
New York 595 3182 0.003 31
California 534 5209 0.002 16
Maine 482 483 0.038 378
Washington 382 1889 0.006 65
Top States for IRISH by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Vermont 240 329 0.039 394
Maine 482 483 0.038 378
Idaho 131 1289 0.010 101
Montana 77 1460 0.009 85
New Hampshire 95 2005 0.008 77

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

Classification and Origin of IRISH

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 IRISH 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 IRISH 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 IRISH in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 337 4.69
Mixed Race 140 1.95
White (Hispanic) 133 1.85
Asian/Pacific 39 0.54
Native American/Alaskan 33 0.46
White (Caucasian) 6,510 90.52

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

Meaning of IRISH in historical publications

A native of Ireland, the country from which the nominal founder of the family came.

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


Similar names to IRISH

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as IRISH.

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 IRISH

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