The history of your name

The THORN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 9,776 3347 0.004 36
United States (1880 census) 5,633 1084 0.011 113
Change since 1880 +4143 -2263 -0.007 -77
Other Countries
Australia 1,154 1428 0.007 71
United Kingdom 3,400 1836 0.007 74
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 THORN

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 THORN 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 THORN 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 THORN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 936 9.57
White (Hispanic) 166 1.7
Mixed Race 120 1.23
Asian/Pacific 112 1.15
Native American/Alaskan 37 0.38
White (Caucasian) 8,405 85.98

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

Meaning of THORN in historical publications

(origin: Local) A town in England; a tree or bush armed with spines or sharp shoots. "Will at the Thorn."

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


THORN. TIIORNE. Parishes and places in cos. York, Somerset, and Northumberland. There are also many trivial localities so called, in many counties. In A-Sax. charters, tliorn-trees frequently occur as boundary-marks, which from the great longevity of the tree is quite natural ; and the word enters into the composition of numerous place-names. In medieval writings the surname Tlioru is latinized De Spineto, splnetum being equivalent to " a bushy place," or thicket of thorns and

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 THORN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as THORN.

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 THORN

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