Bear

At the 2020 census, 8,994 Americans bore the surname Bear — 3,845th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 33,200.

By the numbers

People: 8,994
Rank: 3,845th
How common: 1 in 33,200
Per 100,000: 3.0

Where the name comes from

As an English surname, related to bear.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 74.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 8.8%
Hispanic or Latino 7.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.5%
Black, not Hispanic 2.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.7%

Notable people called Bear

Greg Bear (1951–2022)American writer best known for science fiction
Marius Bear (born 1993)Swiss singer
Panda Bear (born 1978)American musician
Ethan Bear (born 1997)Canadian ice hockey player
Emily Bear (born 2001)American composer and pianist

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

Surnames like Bear

Also a first name

Bear has been given to 3,356 American babies as a first name since 1975, peaking in 2022. 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.