The THORNTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	81,191	347	0.03	301
United States (1880 census)	18,263	296	0.037	365
Change since 1880	+62928	-51	-0.007	-64
Other Countries
Australia	3,753	393	0.023	230
United Kingdom	17,574	318	0.038	383

Top States for THORNTON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Texas	6,629	389	0.032	318
Georgia	5,667	164	0.069	692
Florida	5,104	358	0.032	319
California	5,009	677	0.015	148
Alabama	4,203	148	0.095	945
Top States for THORNTON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Mississippi	3,156	118	0.111	1,109
Alabama	4,203	148	0.095	945
Georgia	5,667	164	0.069	692
Arkansas	1,283	265	0.048	480
Louisiana	2,072	303	0.046	464

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

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

Classification and Origin of THORNTON

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 THORNTON 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 THORNTON 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 THORNTON in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Native American/Alaskan	536	0.66
Asian/Pacific	300	0.37
White (Caucasian)	56,290	69.33
Black/African American	21,540	26.53
Mixed Race	1,461	1.8
White (Hispanic)	1,064	1.31

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

Similar names to THORNTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as THORNTON.

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.