Ernest

At the 2020 census, 4,494 Americans bore the surname Ernest — 7,172nd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 66,500.

By the numbers

People: 4,494
Rank: 7,172nd
How common: 1 in 66,500
Per 100,000: 1.5

Where the name comes from

Borrowed in the 18th century from Ernst, a medieval royal name in Germany, from Old High German ernust (“vigor, strife”), only remotely related to modern German ernst or English earnest.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 71.9%
Black, not Hispanic 16.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 4.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 2.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Surnames like Ernest

Ernst

Also a first name

Ernest has been given to 304,354 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1921. 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.