The history of your name

The KERR surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 42,758 729 0.016 158
United States (1880 census) 13,218 447 0.026 264
Change since 1880 +29540 -282 -0.01 -106
Other Countries
Australia 7,700 163 0.047 471
United Kingdom 27,384 188 0.06 596
Top States for KERR by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 3,532 846 0.010 104
Pennsylvania 3,277 308 0.027 267
Florida 2,903 624 0.018 182
Texas 2,890 836 0.014 139
Ohio 2,242 507 0.020 197
Top States for KERR by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Oklahoma 1,018 407 0.030 295
Pennsylvania 3,277 308 0.027 267
Vermont 144 634 0.024 237
Colorado 946 492 0.022 220
Oregon 751 467 0.022 220

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

Classification and Origin of KERR

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 714 1.67
Mixed Race 697 1.63
Asian/Pacific 274 0.64
Native American/Alaskan 239 0.56
White (Caucasian) 38,136 89.19
Black/African American 2,698 6.31

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

Meaning of KERR in historical publications

(origin: Gaelic, Welsh, and Cor. Br.) Kaer, a castle; figuratively, strong, valiant; car, dear, a kinsman, a friend; Danish, Kier, dear, lovely.

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


KERR. KER. See Carr.

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 KERR

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as KERR.

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 KERR

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