Bly

4,573 people in the United States were counted with the surname Bly in the 2020 census, making it the 7,065th most common in the country. That is about one person in 65,400.

By the numbers

People: 4,573
Rank: 7,065th
How common: 1 in 65,400
Per 100,000: 1.5

Where the name comes from

English surname, from Old English bliþe (“friendly, gentle”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 79.8%
Black, not Hispanic 11.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Bly

Nellie Bly (1865–1922)American journalist
Robert Bly (1926–2021)American poet, author, and activist

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

Surnames like Bly

Blythe

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.