The history of your name

The LIGHT surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 16,671 1996 0.006 62
United States (1880 census) 4,261 1453 0.009 85
Change since 1880 +12410 -543 -0.003 -23
Other Countries
Australia 586 2774 0.004 36
United Kingdom 3,568 1755 0.008 78
Top States for LIGHT by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 1,307 2411 0.004 39
Texas 1,303 1848 0.006 62
Pennsylvania 1,060 1331 0.009 86
Tennessee 1,027 837 0.018 181
Virginia 973 914 0.014 137
Top States for LIGHT by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
West Virginia 388 714 0.021 215
Tennessee 1,027 837 0.018 181
Missouri 800 830 0.014 143
Virginia 973 914 0.014 137
Arkansas 317 1125 0.012 119

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

Classification and Origin of LIGHT

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 523 3.14
White (Hispanic) 232 1.39
Mixed Race 193 1.16
Native American/Alaskan 127 0.76
Asian/Pacific 108 0.65
White (Caucasian) 15,486 92.89

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

Meaning of LIGHT in historical publications

LIGHT. Probably refers to lightness of foot ; or it may be the same as Lyte.

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 LIGHT

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as LIGHT.

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 LIGHT

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