Carlton

At the 2020 census, 20,083 Americans bore the surname Carlton — 1,739th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 14,900.

By the numbers

People: 20,083
Rank: 1,739th
How common: 1 in 14,900
Per 100,000: 6.7

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English ċeorl (“freeman”) and tūn (“town”). The alteration of /tʃ/ to /k/ is down to Old Norse influence.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 76.9%
Black, not Hispanic 13.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Carlton

Vanessa Carlton (born 1980)American singer-songwriter
Larry Carlton (born 1948)American guitarist
Steve Carlton (born 1944)American baseball player
Timothy Carlton (born 1939)British actor
Carl Carlton (1953–2025)American singer-songwriter

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

Surnames like Carlton

Also a first name

Carlton has been given to 49,167 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1957. 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.