The history of your name

The OLSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 163,502 136 0.061 606
United States (1880 census) 19,765 267 0.04 395
Change since 1880 +143737 +131 +0.021 +211
Other Countries
Australia 544 2970 0.003 33
United Kingdom 401 10421 0.001 9
Top States for OLSON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Minnesota 31,133 4 0.633 6,329
Wisconsin 17,864 6 0.333 3,331
California 13,291 190 0.039 392
Washington 10,302 21 0.175 1,748
Illinois 8,559 81 0.069 689
Top States for OLSON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
North Dakota 4,381 3 0.682 6,822
Minnesota 31,133 4 0.633 6,329
South Dakota 3,219 5 0.426 4,264
Wisconsin 17,864 6 0.333 3,331
Montana 2,200 12 0.244 2,439

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

Classification and Origin of OLSON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

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

Classification Total Percent
Asian/Pacific 883 0.54
Black/African American 589 0.36
White (Caucasian) 157,011 96.03
White (Hispanic) 2,256 1.38
Mixed Race 1,700 1.04
Native American/Alaskan 1,046 0.64

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

Meaning of OLSON in historical publications

Sorry, we don't have any information on the meaning of OLSON.

Similar names to OLSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as OLSON.

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 OLSON

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