Clifford
Clifford is the 1,659th most common surname in the United States, shared by 21,150 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 14,100.
By the numbers
- People
- 21,150
- Rank
- 1,659th
- How common
- 1 in 14,100
- Per 100,000
- 7.1
Where the name comes from
Origin Old English
From Old English clif (“cliff”) + ford (“ford”), a dweller at the ford by the steep bank.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Clifford described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Clifford
- William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879)English mathematician and philosopher
- Clark Clifford (1906–1998)American secretary of defense
- Doug Clifford (born 1945)American musician
- Ruth Clifford (1900–1998)American actress
- Rosamund Clifford (1140–1176)Mistress of King Henry II of England
- Michael R. Clifford (1952–2021)American army officer and astronaut
- George Clifford III (1685–1760)Dutch banker, botanist and jurist
- Nathan Clifford (1803–1881)American politician
People named Clifford with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Clifford
Also a first name
Clifford has been given to 190,268 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1925. 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.