Branch

At the 2020 census, 32,953 Americans bore the surname Branch — 1,049th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 9,070.

By the numbers

People: 32,953
Rank: 1,049th
How common: 1 in 9,070
Per 100,000: 11.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Old French

Surname derived from the noun branch. In addition to being a native English surname, the noun has also been calqued from the word for "branch" in other languages, such as German Zweig, Swedish gren, etc.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 45.4%
Black, not Hispanic 44.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.0%
Hispanic or Latino 4.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Branch

Michelle Branch (born 1983)American singer, songwriter and musician
Femi Branch (born 1970)Nigerian actor
John Branch (1782–1863)American politician
Vanessa Branch (born 1973)American actress
Adrian Branch (born 1963)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Branch

Also a first name

Branch has been given to 1,063 American babies as a first name since 1889, peaking in 2018. 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.