The history of your name

The MORGAN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 276,400 62 0.102 1,025
United States (1880 census) 64,256 53 0.129 1,285
Change since 1880 +212144 -9 -0.027 -260
Other Countries
Australia 14,827 68 0.091 907
United Kingdom 84,103 38 0.183 1,831
Top States for MORGAN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 22,153 84 0.106 1,062
California 19,368 127 0.057 572
Florida 16,709 71 0.105 1,045
North Carolina 12,761 46 0.159 1,585
Ohio 12,478 56 0.110 1,099
Top States for MORGAN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Alabama 9,158 44 0.206 2,059
Mississippi 5,700 44 0.200 2,004
Tennessee 10,644 45 0.187 1,871
West Virginia 3,096 39 0.171 1,712
Oklahoma 5,819 42 0.169 1,686

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

Classification and Origin of MORGAN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Wales

Language of origin: Welsh

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 MORGAN 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 MORGAN 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 MORGAN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 216,891 78.47
Black/African American 45,523 16.47
White (Hispanic) 5,141 1.86
Mixed Race 4,533 1.64
Native American/Alaskan 3,179 1.15
Asian/Pacific 1,161 0.42

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

Meaning of MORGAN in historical publications

From Mor, the sea, and gan, born; the same as Pelagius--born on the sea, from the Greek ??, the sea. Mor, the sea, and gan, by or near--near the sea, a locality.

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


Similar names to MORGAN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as MORGAN.

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 MORGAN

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