The history of your name

The SELF surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 22,954 1426 0.009 85
United States (1880 census) 3,524 1734 0.007 70
Change since 1880 +19430 +308 +0.002 +15
Other Countries
Australia 343 4609 0.002 21
United Kingdom 2,274 2650 0.005 50
Top States for SELF by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Texas 3,203 823 0.015 154
Alabama 1,961 358 0.044 441
North Carolina 1,410 868 0.018 175
Tennessee 1,402 649 0.025 246
California 1,383 2364 0.004 41
Top States for SELF by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Alabama 1,961 358 0.044 441
Oklahoma 1,154 392 0.033 334
Louisiana 1,188 552 0.027 266
Arkansas 673 527 0.025 252
Tennessee 1,402 649 0.025 246

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

Classification and Origin of SELF

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 SELF 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 SELF 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 SELF in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 367 1.6
Mixed Race 326 1.42
Native American/Alaskan 271 1.18
Asian/Pacific 83 0.36
White (Caucasian) 20,723 90.28
Black/African American 1,187 5.17

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

Meaning of SELF in historical publications

SELF. SELFE. "The name of Sewlf (sea-wolf) occurs in a charter of Canute, and it is, probablj', the same as the Saulf in the Domesday of Derbyshire, where it is in the Scandinavian form." Ferguson.

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 SELF

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as SELF.

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 SELF

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