Ashley

At the 2020 census, 36,420 Americans bore the surname Ashley — 941st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 8,207.

By the numbers

People: 36,420
Rank: 941st
How common: 1 in 8,207
Per 100,000: 12.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English *Æsċlēah, composed of æsċ (“ash tree”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”). Equivalent.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 68.5%
Black, not Hispanic 20.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 2.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Ashley

Simone Ashley (born 1995)British actress
Elizabeth Ashley (born 1939)American actress
Laura Ashley (1925–1985)Welsh designer of textiles, clothing, and home furnishings
Kaitlyn Ashley (born 1971)American pornographic actress
Ian Ashley (born 1947)British racing driver
Tom Ashley (born 1984)New Zealand windsurfer
April Ashley (1935–2021)English model, actress, author, and activist
Robert Ashley (1930–2014)American composer

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

Surnames like Ashley

Also a first name

Ashley has been given to 875,722 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1987. 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.