Dexter

At the 2020 census, 9,351 Americans bore the surname Dexter — 3,691st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 32,000.

By the numbers

People: 9,351
Rank: 3,691st
How common: 1 in 32,000
Per 100,000: 3.1

Where the name comes from

Origin an occupational name

Variant of Dyster. Also partially from Latin dexter (“right (handed)”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 81.4%
Black, not Hispanic 10.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Dexter

Colin Dexter (1930–2017)British writer
Brad Dexter (1917–2002)American actor
Samuel Dexter (1761–1816)American politician (1761–1816) who served in Congress and in Presidential Cabinets of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Timothy Dexter (1747–1806)American businessman and author
Elliott Dexter (1870–1941)American actor

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

Also a first name

Dexter has been given to 36,800 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2012. 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.