The history of your name

The PHELPS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 51,154 598 0.019 190
United States (1880 census) 16,213 348 0.032 324
Change since 1880 +34941 -250 -0.013 -134
Other Countries
Australia 1,151 1430 0.007 70
United Kingdom 4,398 1429 0.01 96
Top States for PHELPS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 3,682 879 0.011 109
Texas 3,238 807 0.016 155
Kentucky 3,214 143 0.080 795
Florida 2,715 745 0.017 170
North Carolina 2,544 454 0.032 316
Top States for PHELPS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 3,214 143 0.080 795
Vermont 320 225 0.053 526
North Carolina 2,544 454 0.032 316
Idaho 406 366 0.031 314
Indiana 1,826 343 0.030 300

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

Classification and Origin of PHELPS

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 PHELPS 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 PHELPS 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 PHELPS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 742 1.45
Mixed Race 732 1.43
Native American/Alaskan 297 0.58
Asian/Pacific 220 0.43
White (Caucasian) 44,412 86.82
Black/African American 4,747 9.28

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

Meaning of PHELPS in historical publications

Supposed to be the same as Phillips (which see). The name may come from the Danish, Hvalp; Swedish, Valp, a whelp.

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


PHELP. PHELPS. See Philip, which was often written Phelype.

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 PHELPS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PHELPS.

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 PHELPS

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