The PETTERSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	3,024	9859	0.001	11
United States (1880 census)	1,814	3266	0.004	36
Change since 1880	+1210	-6593	-0.003	-25
Other Countries
Australia	340	4637	0.002	21
United Kingdom	250	14324	0.001	5

Top States for PETTERSON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
California	367	7959	0.001	11
Minnesota	224	3209	0.005	46
Florida	183	10819	0.001	11
Texas	167	11105	0.001	8
Washington	154	5181	0.003	26
Top States for PETTERSON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
South Dakota	35	4022	0.005	46
Minnesota	224	3209	0.005	46
Idaho	51	3914	0.004	39
Oregon	117	4085	0.003	34
North Dakota	19	6659	0.003	30

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

Classification and Origin of PETTERSON

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 PETTERSON 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 PETTERSON 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 PETTERSON in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	432	14.29
White (Hispanic)	94	3.11
Mixed Race	42	1.39
Asian/Pacific	19	0.63
Native American/Alaskan	14	0.46
White (Caucasian)	2,423	80.13

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

Similar names to PETTERSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PETTERSON.

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.