The history of your name

The POVEY surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 315 59916 0 1
United States (1880 census) 52 48571 0 1
Change since 1880 +263 -11345 +N/A 0
Other Countries
Australia 348 4536 0.002 21
United Kingdom 3,533 1776 0.008 77
Top States for POVEY by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Utah 42 5181 0.002 19
Michigan 41 26786 0.000 4
California 32 56024 0.000 1
Idaho 30 5364 0.002 23
Florida 26 48304 0.000 2
Top States for POVEY by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Idaho 30 5364 0.002 23
Utah 42 5181 0.002 19
Oregon 26 13997 0.001 8
Nevada 11 18201 0.001 6
Michigan 41 26786 0.000 4

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

Classification and Origin of POVEY

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the POVEY 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 POVEY 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 POVEY in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 298 94.6
Mixed Race 8 2.54
Asian/Pacific Less than 100 Insignificant
Black/African American None reported 0
Native American/Alaskan Less than 100 Insignificant
White (Hispanic) Less than 100 Insignificant

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

Meaning of POVEY in historical publications

POVEY. A Gloucestershire provincialism for an owl. Halliwell mentions a Westcountry proverb —

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 POVEY

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as POVEY.

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 POVEY

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