The WELLS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	170,635	131	0.063	632
United States (1880 census)	46,030	91	0.092	921
Change since 1880	+124605	-40	-0.029	-289
Other Countries
Australia	8,154	152	0.05	499
United Kingdom	31,941	152	0.07	695

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 WELLS

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 WELLS 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 WELLS 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 WELLS in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Asian/Pacific	631	0.37
White (Caucasian)	130,212	76.31
Black/African American	33,001	19.34
Mixed Race	2,747	1.61
White (Hispanic)	2,662	1.56
Native American/Alaskan	1,365	0.8

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

Meaning of WELLS in historical publications

(origin: Local) A name given to a person who resided there. "John, at the Wells"--John Wells. A bishop's see in Somersetshire, so called from the wells or springs there.

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

WELLS. 1. Towns in cos, Somerset and Noi-folk, 2. A pluralization of Well, which see.

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 WELLS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as WELLS.

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.