The WASHINGTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	163,036	138	0.06	604
United States (1880 census)	38,157	124	0.076	763
Change since 1880	+124879	-14	-0.016	-159
Other Countries
Australia	522	3083	0.003	32
United Kingdom	1,984	2970	0.004	43

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 WASHINGTON

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 WASHINGTON 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 WASHINGTON 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 WASHINGTON in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Asian/Pacific	408	0.25
Black/African American	146,520	89.87
White (Caucasian)	8,413	5.16
Mixed Race	4,304	2.64
White (Hispanic)	2,364	1.45
Native American/Alaskan	1,043	0.64

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

Meaning of WASHINGTON in historical publications

(origin: Local) Originally Wessyngton or De Wessyngton. The name was taken from the place in England where the family originated; from weis, a wash, a creek setting in from the sea, the shallow part of a river, ing, a meadow or low ground, and ton, for dun, a hill or town--the town on the wash or salt river or creek.

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

WASHINGTON. Parishes in Durham and Sussex, and a village in Perthshire, are so called. The ancestors of George Washington, the American patriot, are presumed to have been the old gentry stock seated in Northamptonshire, and previously in Lancashire (Shirley's Sicmniata Shirleiana, p. 136.) ; but the county from which the first assumer of the name sprang, is unknown. The followingingenious and almost poetical passage from Mr. Ferguson (pp. 115, 11 G), is worthy of quotation, though the derivation of the heritable surname Washington from an Anglo-Saxon called Wass, and his Wassings, is clearly untenable. The first De Washington — whenever aud wherever he flourished — was more likely a Norman,

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 WASHINGTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as WASHINGTON.

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.