The history of your name

The RUTHERFORD surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 27,539 1167 0.01 102
United States (1880 census) 6,733 895 0.013 135
Change since 1880 +20806 -272 -0.003 -33
Other Countries
Australia 2,023 800 0.012 124
United Kingdom 9,007 663 0.02 196
Top States for RUTHERFORD by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 2,366 1078 0.011 113
California 1,934 1686 0.006 57
Tennessee 1,866 448 0.033 328
Florida 1,694 1211 0.011 106
Ohio 1,615 804 0.014 142
Top States for RUTHERFORD by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Tennessee 1,866 448 0.033 328
West Virginia 488 553 0.027 270
Mississippi 620 709 0.022 218
Oklahoma 566 808 0.016 164
Alabama 716 1032 0.016 161

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

Classification and Origin of RUTHERFORD

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 RUTHERFORD 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 RUTHERFORD 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 RUTHERFORD in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 438 1.59
White (Hispanic) 405 1.47
Native American/Alaskan 281 1.02
Asian/Pacific 94 0.34
White (Caucasian) 23,133 84
Black/African American 3,189 11.58

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

Meaning of RUTHERFORD in historical publications

(origin: Local) From the lands of Rutherford on the river Tweed, in the parish of Maxton, Roxburgshire, Scotland. The name is derived from the Welsh Ruthr, rushing, swift, and fford, a ford or way.

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


RUTHERFORD. See Rutherfurd.

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 RUTHERFORD

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as RUTHERFORD.

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 RUTHERFORD

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