Bright

32,068 people in the United States were counted with the surname Bright in the 2020 census, making it the 1,074th most common in the country. That is about one person in 9,321.

By the numbers

People: 32,068
Rank: 1,074th
How common: 1 in 9,321
Per 100,000: 10.7

Where the name comes from

As an English surname, from the root of bright. As an Anglicized German surname, from Brecht and Breit.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 67.5%
Black, not Hispanic 22.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Bright

Millie Bright (born 1993)English association football player
Cameron Bright (born 1993)Canadian actor
Richard Bright (1789–1858)British pathologist
Torah Bright (born 1986)Australian snowboarder
John Bright (1811–1889)British Radical and Liberal statesman
Richard Bright (1937–2006)American actor
Bill Bright (1921–2003)American evangelist
Ella Bright (born 2006)British-American actress

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

Surnames like Bright

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.