Elgin

At the 2020 census, 2,657 Americans bore the surname Elgin — 11,348th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 112,000.

By the numbers

People: 2,657
Rank: 11,348th
How common: 1 in 112,000
Per 100,000: 0.89

Where the name comes from

As a Scottish surname, derived from the place in Morayshire, from Scottish Gaelic Eilginn, possibly meaning little Ireland, from Èirinn.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.1%
Black, not Hispanic 5.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.0%
Hispanic or Latino 2.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Elgin

Suzette Haden Elgin (1936–2015)American linguist and writer

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

Also a first name

Elgin has been given to 4,002 American babies as a first name since 1886, peaking in 1920. 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.