The U.S. Census Bureau released on April 14 a set of data tables showing the most common first and last names reported in the 2020 Census.
The release includes national-level counts of last names by race and Hispanic origin, first names by race and Hispanic origin, as well as first names by sex. A summary table is also available comparing the most common names from previous censuses in 1790, 1990, 2000, and 2010 with those in the latest census.
According to the Census Bureau, this is the first time since the 1990 Census that data on first names has been provided alongside surname counts. The agency said it uses terms like “predominantly” when a majority of people with a listed name identified with a single race, Hispanic origin, or sex category. For example, “Garcia” is described as a predominantly Hispanic last name because “91% of the people named Garcia chose Hispanic in their response to the 2020 Census.”
Eight surnames—Brown, Davis, Johnson, Jones, Miller, Smith, Williams and Wilson—have remained among the top fifteen since the nation’s first census in 1790. The agency noted that since 2000 there has been an increase in predominantly Hispanic surnames entering this group; six such surnames—Garcia, Gonzalez, Hernandez, Lopez, Martinez and Rodriguez—are now included among the top fifteen.
The bureau also observed shifts reflecting immigration patterns: between 2010 and 2020 nearly all of the fastest-growing surnames among those ranked in the top thousand were predominantly Asian—a change from just eleven Asian surnames making that list between 2000 and 2010.
Despite women outnumbering men nationally in 2020 according to census figures,”the top five most common first names were all predominantly male.” The bureau explained this suggests greater variety among female given names than male ones. Names such as Michael, John and James remain almost entirely male while Mary, Maria and Jennifer are mostly female; some like Harley or Quinn are close to evenly split between genders.
Confidentiality safeguards are applied so only frequencies for individual given or family names are released—not combinations nor information about specific individuals. More details about these findings can be found on census.gov under datasets for name frequency.
