Cotton

At the 2020 census, 31,686 Americans bore the surname Cotton — 1,085th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 9,433.

By the numbers

People: 31,686
Rank: 1,085th
How common: 1 in 9,433
Per 100,000: 10.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English cottūn (“cottage farmstead”), from cot (“cottage”) + tūn (“homestead”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 49.9%
Black, not Hispanic 40.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Cotton

Tom Cotton (born 1977)American politician and army officer
James Cotton (1935–2017)American blues singer-songwriter
Eugénie Cotton (1881–1967)French scientist and women's rights activist
F. Albert Cotton (1930–2007)American chemist
Mary Ann Cotton (1832–1873)British murderer
Annie Cotton (born 1975)Canadian television actor
Fearne Cotton (born 1981)English television and radio presenter
Bryce Cotton (born 1992)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Cotton

Also a first name

Cotton has been given to 507 American babies as a first name since 1918, peaking in 2015. 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.