The OWEN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	60,461	496	0.022	224
United States (1880 census)	19,327	274	0.039	387
Change since 1880	+41134	-222	-0.017	-163
Other Countries
Australia	5,127	273	0.031	314
United Kingdom	47,875	87	0.104	1,042

Top States for OWEN by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Texas	5,460	424	0.026	262
California	5,091	595	0.015	150
Florida	3,497	518	0.022	219
North Carolina	3,282	312	0.041	408
Virginia	2,615	296	0.037	369
Top States for OWEN by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Alabama	2,046	315	0.046	460
Tennessee	2,476	330	0.044	435
Oklahoma	1,476	261	0.043	428
North Carolina	3,282	312	0.041	408
Arkansas	1,039	297	0.039	389

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.

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

Classification and Origin of OWEN

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 OWEN 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 OWEN 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 OWEN in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Hispanic)	955	1.58
Mixed Race	774	1.28
Native American/Alaskan	526	0.87
Asian/Pacific	333	0.55
White (Caucasian)	56,446	93.36
Black/African American	1,433	2.37

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

Meaning of OWEN in historical publications

(origin: Celtic.) The good offspring. Oen, Welsh, and Gaelic, uan, a lamb.

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

OWEN. A personal name in Wales. Most of our Owens are from that principality, but it is possible that a few may be of Saxon blood, for there is an Owiue in the Domesday of Yorkshire, and a still earlier Owiue occurs in the Codex Diplomaticus. It is one of the most common of Welsh surnames. As I have elsewhere observed in this volume, the commonness of AVelsh patronymics has tended to a great confusion of the ' gentle ' and the ' simple ' in Wales. There are thousands of Owens who bear that name simply because their grandfathers or perhaps their fathers bore it as a Christian name. In ancient families the patryuomic became a statiouarj' family name about the tunes of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth.

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 OWEN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as OWEN.

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.