Colby

10,566 people in the United States were counted with the surname Colby in the 2020 census, making it the 3,336th most common in the country. That is about one person in 28,300.

By the numbers

People: 10,566
Rank: 3,336th
How common: 1 in 28,300
Per 100,000: 3.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Old Norse

From either the Old Norse personal name Koli or kol (“charcoal”) + býr (“settlement”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 89.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Black, not Hispanic 1.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Colby

Bainbridge Colby (1869–1950)American politician
William Colby (1920–1996)American intelligence agent
Barbara Colby (1939–1975)American actress
Elbridge Colby (born 1979)American official and strategy consultant

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

Surnames like Colby

Also a first name

Colby has been given to 58,155 American babies as a first name since 1888, peaking in 2001. 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.