The history of your name

The KELSEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 13,849 2397 0.005 51
United States (1880 census) 5,241 1160 0.01 105
Change since 1880 +8608 -1237 -0.005 -54
Other Countries
Australia 400 3956 0.002 24
United Kingdom 2,646 2342 0.006 58
Top States for KELSEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
New York 1,192 1603 0.006 63
California 1,118 2951 0.003 33
Michigan 809 1433 0.008 81
Florida 807 2682 0.005 50
Texas 747 3222 0.004 36
Top States for KELSEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Utah 364 875 0.016 163
Idaho 152 1190 0.012 117
Connecticut 396 1111 0.012 116
Montana 102 1123 0.011 113
Maine 117 2050 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 KELSEY live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called KELSEY represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called KELSEY in New York than any other state, but you are more likely to find a KELSEY by picking someone at random in Utah than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of KELSEY

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 KELSEY 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 KELSEY 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 KELSEY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 215 1.55
White (Hispanic) 206 1.49
Native American/Alaskan 202 1.46
Asian/Pacific 94 0.68
White (Caucasian) 11,779 85.05
Black/African American 1,352 9.76

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

Meaning of KELSEY in historical publications

(origin: Local) A town in Lincolnshire, England. Kelsey, in Cornish British, signifies the "dry neck," from Kel, a neck, and syck, dry.

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


KELSEY. Xorth and South Kelsey are parishes in co. Lincoln.

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 KELSEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as KELSEY.

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 KELSEY

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