Clifton

At the 2020 census, 23,350 Americans bore the surname Clifton — 1,493rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 12,800.

By the numbers

People: 23,350
Rank: 1,493rd
How common: 1 in 12,800
Per 100,000: 7.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 78.6%
Black, not Hispanic 12.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Clifton

Scott Clifton (born 1984)American television actor, musician, Internet personality
Lucille Clifton (1936–2010)American poet
Elmer Clifton (1890–1949)American film director
Mark Clifton (1906–1963)American writer
Nathaniel Clifton (1922–1990)American basketball player-coach

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

Surnames like Clifton

Also a first name

Clifton has been given to 70,685 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1975. 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.