Bode

At the 2020 census, 5,763 Americans bore the surname Bode — 5,789th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 51,900.

By the numbers

People: 5,763
Rank: 5,789th
How common: 1 in 51,900
Per 100,000: 1.9

Where the name comes from

As a Dutch and German surname, from bode (“messenger”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 89.8%
Hispanic or Latino 4.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.4%
Black, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Bode

Johann Elert Bode (1747–1826)Prusian astronomer
Marco Bode (born 1969)German association football player
Dániel Böde (born 1986)association footballer
Hendrik Wade Bode (1905–1982)American engineer, researcher, and inventor
Wilhelm von Bode (1845–1929)German art historian and museum director
Arnold Bode (1900–1977)German artist
Franz-Josef Bode (born 1951)Roman Catholic bishop
Johann Joachim Christoph Bode (1730–1793)German translator

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

Surnames like Bode

Also a first name

Bode has been given to 4,759 American babies as a first name since 1998, 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.