Elmer

5,555 people in the United States were counted with the surname Elmer in the 2020 census, making it the 5,969th most common in the country. That is about one person in 53,800.

By the numbers

People: 5,555
Rank: 5,969th
How common: 1 in 53,800
Per 100,000: 1.9

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

Medieval variant of the given name Aylmer, from Old English Æþelmǣr.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 90.1%
Hispanic or Latino 4.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%
Black, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Elmer

Jonathan Elmer (1745–1817)American politician
Lachlan Elmer (born 1969)field hockey player
James Elmer (born 1971)Australian field hockey player

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

Surnames like Elmer

Elmore

Also a first name

Elmer has been given to 131,344 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1918. 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.