The MEDCALF surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	1,231	20138	0	5
United States (1880 census)	828	6371	0.002	17
Change since 1880	+403	-13767	+N/A	-12
Other Countries
Australia	333	4738	0.002	20
United Kingdom	1,107	4839	0.002	24

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

'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.

Classification and Origin of MEDCALF

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 MEDCALF 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 MEDCALF 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 MEDCALF in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	121	9.83
White (Hispanic)	32	2.6
Mixed Race	14	1.14
Native American/Alaskan	11	0.89
Asian/Pacific	6	0.49
White (Caucasian)	1,047	85.05

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

Meaning of MEDCALF in historical publications

:METCALFE. MEDCALF. a great Yorkshire family. In the third year of Queen Mary, Sir Cliristopher Metcalfe met " the judges at York, attended on with three hundred horsemen, all of his own name and kindred, well mounted and suitably attired. The Roman Fabii, the most populous tribe in that city, could hardly have made so fair an appearance, insomuch that Master Camden gives the Metcalfes this character : Queb uumerosissima totius Anglite familia his temporibus censetur, (which at this time, viz., Anno 1607, is counted the most numerous family of England.) Here I forbear mentioning of another, which perchance might vie with them, lest casually I minister matter of contest." Fuller's AVorthies, iii. p. 455. The origin of the name (probably local) is unknown. Dr. Whitaker fancifully derives it from jrec, a Saxon baptismal name, and halgh, a low, watery, flat. Others consider it a compound of the Welsh Mccld, a mead, and caf, a cell or church. (Arthur.) Tradition, however, affords a much more easy explanation of it. One John Strong having seized a mad bull by the nostrils with his left hand, killed the beast with his right, and being afterwards questioned on the subject of his prowess, modestly declared that he had simply inet a calf. From that time he acquired the surname of Metcalf ! Another version of the story is that " two

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 MEDCALF

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as MEDCALF.

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.