The history of your name

The PENSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 1,557 16871 0.001 6
United States (1880 census) 127 26776 0 3
Change since 1880 +1430 +9905 +N/A +3
Other Countries
Australia 96 14764 0.001 6
United Kingdom 526 8528 0.001 11
Top States for PENSON by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 272 7746 0.001 13
Georgia 221 4258 0.003 27
Ohio 119 12350 0.001 10
California 85 29587 0.000 3
Mississippi 84 4013 0.003 30
Top States for PENSON by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Mississippi 84 4013 0.003 30
Georgia 221 4258 0.003 27
Vermont 12 8204 0.002 20
Texas 272 7746 0.001 13
Tennessee 67 8471 0.001 12

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

Classification and Origin of PENSON

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 PENSON 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 PENSON 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 PENSON in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 828 53.18
White (Caucasian) 615 39.5
White (Hispanic) 59 3.79
Mixed Race 33 2.12
Asian/Pacific 16 1.03
Native American/Alaskan 6 0.39

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

Meaning of PENSON in historical publications

PENSON. A corruption of Benson, or of Pension.

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 PENSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PENSON.

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 PENSON

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