Boston
15,314 people in the United States were counted with the surname Boston in the 2020 census, making it the 2,322nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 19,500.
By the numbers
- People
- 15,314
- Rank
- 2,322nd
- How common
- 1 in 19,500
- Per 100,000
- 5.1
Where the name comes from
The US city is named after the English town (from which several prominent colonists had come), which itself is sometimes said to be named as a contraction of Botolph's town or Botolph's stone (the name Botolph itself coming from Old English Botwulf, from boda + wulf). However, this is uncertain.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Boston described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Boston
- Ralph Boston (1939–2023)Olympic athlete
- Rachel Boston (born 1982)American actress
- Aliyah Boston (born 2001)American basketball player
- Brandon Boston Jr. (born 2001)American basketball player
- Lawrence Boston (born 1956)American basketball player
People named Boston with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Boston
Also a first name
Boston has been given to 11,944 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2014. 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.