The history of your name

The WATERS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 65,817 455 0.024 244
United States (1880 census) 18,069 302 0.036 361
Change since 1880 +47748 -153 -0.012 -117
Other Countries
Australia 5,702 240 0.035 349
United Kingdom 15,153 388 0.033 330
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 WATERS

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From name of parent

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the WATERS 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 WATERS 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 WATERS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 994 1.51
Native American/Alaskan 520 0.79
Asian/Pacific 244 0.37
White (Caucasian) 49,540 75.27
Black/African American 13,506 20.52
Mixed Race 1,014 1.54

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

Meaning of WATERS in historical publications

(origin: Local) A name given to one who navigated the waters, or resided near them.

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


WATERS. In some dialects, the word water is applied to lakes and rivers, as Ullswater, Derwent-water, Black-water. Upon the adoption of surnames hy the common people, a person who resided near such a place would be called William or John Atte-Water, still retained in Attwater; but on the omission of the i)reposition in the XV. centui'}', the name was ijlui'alized to Waters. The latinizations are De Aqua and Ad Aquam. See Water.

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 WATERS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as WATERS.

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 WATERS

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