The PATTERSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	198,557	104	0.074	736
United States (1880 census)	50,355	74	0.101	1,007
Change since 1880	+148202	-30	-0.027	-271
Other Countries
Australia	6,633	192	0.041	406
United Kingdom	20,340	271	0.044	443

Top States for PATTERSON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Texas	15,578	130	0.075	747
California	13,879	195	0.041	410
Florida	11,242	122	0.070	703
North Carolina	9,567	74	0.119	1,189
Ohio	9,510	82	0.084	838
Top States for PATTERSON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Alabama	8,276	53	0.186	1,861
Tennessee	8,834	63	0.155	1,553
South Carolina	6,047	71	0.151	1,507
Mississippi	3,923	83	0.138	1,379
North Carolina	9,567	74	0.119	1,189

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

Classification and Origin of PATTERSON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

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 PATTERSON 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 PATTERSON 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 PATTERSON in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Asian/Pacific	735	0.37
White (Caucasian)	139,169	70.09
Black/African American	50,950	25.66
Mixed Race	3,316	1.67
White (Hispanic)	3,197	1.61
Native American/Alaskan	1,211	0.61

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

Similar names to PATTERSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PATTERSON.

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.