The history of your name

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

'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.

Meaning of THORNTON in historical publications

THORNTON. Parishes and places in cos. Bucks, Durham, Lancaster, Leicester, 1-iucoln, York, Chester, and Northumberland. Yorkshire abounds with jjlaces so called. Thorne appears to have been an old Anglo-Saxon personal name ; and hence Thornton may mean the homestead of Thorne.

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 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.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for THORNTON

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