The history of your name

The KEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 31,882 999 0.012 118
United States (1880 census) 6,305 967 0.013 126
Change since 1880 +25577 -32 -0.001 -8
Other Countries
Australia 598 2703 0.004 37
United Kingdom 4,934 1270 0.011 107
Top States for KEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 3,640 708 0.017 175
Alabama 2,879 225 0.065 647
Tennessee 2,654 324 0.047 466
Georgia 2,141 488 0.026 262
North Carolina 1,913 617 0.024 238
Top States for KEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Alabama 2,879 225 0.065 647
Tennessee 2,654 324 0.047 466
Arkansas 769 441 0.029 288
Kentucky 1,149 530 0.028 284
South Carolina 1,102 598 0.027 275

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

Classification and Origin of KEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 539 1.69
Mixed Race 536 1.68
Native American/Alaskan 287 0.9
Asian/Pacific 230 0.72
White (Caucasian) 22,735 71.31
Black/African American 7,556 23.7

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

Meaning of KEY in historical publications

KEY. KEYES. keys. The same as Kay, which see.

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 KEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as KEY.

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 KEY

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