The history of your name

The METCALF surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 23,540 1381 0.009 87
United States (1880 census) 6,722 897 0.013 134
Change since 1880 +16818 -484 -0.004 -47
Other Countries
Australia 920 1782 0.006 56
United Kingdom 4,233 1491 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.

Classification and Origin of METCALF

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 METCALF 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 METCALF 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 METCALF in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 351 1.49
White (Hispanic) 344 1.46
Native American/Alaskan 200 0.85
Asian/Pacific 106 0.45
White (Caucasian) 20,753 88.16
Black/African American 1,787 7.59

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

Meaning of METCALF in historical publications

In the Welsh, medd signifies a vale, a meadow, and caf, a cell, a chancel, a church, i. e., the church in the vale. The origin of the name, however, is given by tradition in this wise. In those days when bullfights were in vogue, in merry England, one of the enraged animals broke away from the combat, and was hotly pursued by horsemen. A certain John Strong happened to meet the bull on the top of a hill, and when attacked by the furious beast, he seized him in the nostrils with his left hand, and killed him. As he came to the foot of the hill, meeting several persons in the pursuit, he was inquired of whether he had met a bull; he replied he "Met a calf," and from this circumstance was called afterward John Metcalfe.

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


Similar names to METCALF

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as METCALF.

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 METCALF

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