Block

At the 2020 census, 20,636 Americans bore the surname Block — 1,703rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 14,500.

By the numbers

People: 20,636
Rank: 1,703rd
How common: 1 in 14,500
Per 100,000: 6.9

Where the name comes from

A Germanic surname (German, Dutch and English), from German Block and Dutch blok respectively. As an English surname from the same cognate, block.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 88.0%
Black, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Block

Ken Block (1967–2023)American rally driver
Walter Block (born 1941)Austrian School economist and prominent anarcho-capitalist
Lawrence Block (born 1938)American writer
Zhanna Pintusevych-Block (born 1972)Athletics competitor, sprinter
Agnes Block (1629–1704)Dutch botanist and art collector
Ned Block (born 1942)American philosopher and academic
Maggie De Block (born 1962)Flemish politician
Johannes Block (1894–1945)German general

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

Surnames like Block

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.