The history of your name

The REED surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 267,443 65 0.099 991
United States (1880 census) 76,231 42 0.152 1,525
Change since 1880 +191212 -23 -0.053 -534
Other Countries
Australia 4,875 296 0.03 298
United Kingdom 27,473 185 0.06 598
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.

Classification and Origin of REED

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

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

Classification Total Percent
White (Caucasian) 196,597 73.51
Black/African American 58,757 21.97
Mixed Race 4,466 1.67
White (Hispanic) 3,878 1.45
Native American/Alaskan 2,674 1
Asian/Pacific 1,070 0.4

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

Meaning of REED in historical publications

REED. 1. Red— allusive to complexion or dress, probably the former. This is a common medieval spelling. " What betokeneth it whan the sonne gothe downe reed?"'' Palsgrave. Maundevile says of the Red Sea : " that see is not more reed than another see." 2. Reed, a parish in Hertfordsliire ; Reede, another in Suffolk. The Reeds of Cragg, co. Northumberland, probably took their name from Redesdale, in which they have been immemorially located, or rather from the river which gives name to that dale. On a mural monument in Elsdon church, erected in the year 1758, to the memory of Elrington Reed, the family are stated to have been resident in Redesdale for more than nine hundred years. This Sir Walter Scott calls an " incredible space " of time, and so it is ; though the high antiquity of the family is unquestionable. See notes to Rokeby.

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 REED

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as REED.

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 REED

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