Blair

At the 2020 census, 75,384 Americans bore the surname Blair — 428th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,965.

By the numbers

People: 75,384
Rank: 428th
How common: 1 in 3,965
Per 100,000: 25.2

Where the name comes from

From Scottish Gaelic blàr (“field, plain”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 76.3%
Black, not Hispanic 14.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Blair

Tony Blair (born 1953)Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007
Linda Blair (born 1959)American actress
Selma Blair (born 1972)American actress
Bonnie Blair (born 1964)American speed skater
Betsy Blair (1923–2009)American actress
Mary Blair (1911–1978)American artist
Cherie Blair (born 1954)British barrister and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
DeJuan Blair (born 1989)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Blair

Also a first name

Blair has been given to 38,276 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 2025. 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.