Bowden

23,246 people in the United States were counted with the surname Bowden in the 2020 census, making it the 1,497th most common in the country. That is about one person in 12,900.

By the numbers

People: 23,246
Rank: 1,497th
How common: 1 in 12,900
Per 100,000: 7.8

Where the name comes from

As an English surname, from several places in England, derived from Old English boga (“bow”) + dun (“hill”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 70.1%
Black, not Hispanic 21.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Bowden

Katrina Bowden (born 1988)American actress and model
Mark Bowden (born 1951)American journalist and writer
Norris Bowden (1926–1991)Canadian figure skater

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

Surnames like Bowden

Also a first name

Bowden has been given to 656 American babies as a first name since 1976, 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.