The WAKE surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	2,430	11807	0.001	9
United States (1880 census)	402	11451	0.001	8
Change since 1880	+2028	-356	0	+1
Other Countries
Australia	677	2390	0.004	41
United Kingdom	3,177	1968	0.007	69

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.

Classification and Origin of WAKE

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 WAKE 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 WAKE 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 WAKE in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	369	15.19
Asian/Pacific	61	2.51
Mixed Race	46	1.89
White (Hispanic)	44	1.81
Native American/Alaskan	21	0.86
White (Caucasian)	1,889	77.74

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

Meaning of WAKE in historical publications

WAKE. Much discrepancy exists among genealogists as to the origin of this name and family. The baronet's family claim from Hugh "Wac, lord of Wilesford, co. Lincoln, temp. Henry I., whose line ended with that Lord Wake, whose sister and heiress married Eduiund of Woodstock, a younger son of Edward I. From other authorities it would appear that tliey spring from Hereward le Wake, who flourished under the Confessor. Archbishop Wake, who wrote a short account of his ancestr}', disowns the Norman derivation, and thinks the name Le Wake, or fJie Watchful, a title given to Hereward, to describe his chai'acter as a skilful military commander. See N. and Q., 2ud S. vi. passim. The name Wake occurs in some copies of the so-called Battel-Abbey Roll.

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 WAKE

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as WAKE.

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.