The history of your name

The POYNTER surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 4,207 7305 0.002 16
United States (1880 census) 466 10236 0.001 9
Change since 1880 +3741 +2931 +0.001 +7
Other Countries
Australia 278 5582 0.002 17
United Kingdom 1,173 4617 0.003 26
Top States for POYNTER by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 1,093 552 0.027 270
Indiana 473 1597 0.008 78
Ohio 362 3857 0.003 32
California 237 10881 0.001 7
Texas 208 8691 0.001 10
Top States for POYNTER by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Kentucky 1,093 552 0.027 270
Indiana 473 1597 0.008 78
Ohio 362 3857 0.003 32
Missouri 174 4246 0.003 31
Arkansas 82 3862 0.003 31

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

Classification and Origin of POYNTER

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Occupational Name

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

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 216 5.13
Mixed Race 76 1.81
White (Hispanic) 45 1.07
Asian/Pacific 19 0.45
Native American/Alaskan 12 0.29
White (Caucasian) 3,839 91.25

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

Meaning of POYNTER in historical publications

POYNTER. POINTER. A. jioint, in ancient costume, was a kind of tagged lace, and hence a Pointer may have been a maker of such articles.* Some of the Poynters, however, are of French origin, being descendants of Ambrose Pointier, of Arras, who settled here at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The armorials of this family arepoi»tciUj allusive ; the shield contains pointed piles; the crest is a hand holding a cross-fitchee, or pointed, to which the fore-finger points ; while the motto is Pense a jjointer.

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 POYNTER

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as POYNTER.

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 POYNTER

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