Allison

At the 2020 census, 49,879 Americans bore the surname Allison — 665th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 5,992.

By the numbers

People: 49,879
Rank: 665th
How common: 1 in 5,992
Per 100,000: 16.7

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From a Middle English diminutive form of Alan, Alexander.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Allison described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 77.3%
Black, not Hispanic 13.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Allison

James P. Allison (born 1948)American immunologist and Nobel laureate
Dorothy Allison (1949–2024)American writer, poet, novelist, critic
Cliff Allison (1932–2005)British racing driver
Graham T. Allison (born 1940)American political scientist
Wilmer Allison (1904–1977)US tennis player
Patricia Allison (born 1994)English actress
Malcolm Allison (1927–2010)English footballer and manager
Mose Allison (1927–2016)American jazz blues pianist and singer

People named Allison with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Allison

Also a first name

Allison has been given to 322,944 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1994. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.