Ferris

Ferris is the 1,774th most common surname in the United States, shared by 19,733 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 15,100.

By the numbers

People: 19,733
Rank: 1,774th
How common: 1 in 15,100
Per 100,000: 6.6

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

English surname, from Norman Ferrers, from the toponymic Ferrières, from French fer (“iron”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 88.2%
Hispanic or Latino 4.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.4%
Black, not Hispanic 2.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%

Notable people called Ferris

Pam Ferris (born 1948)British actress
George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (1859–1896)American engineer
Samantha Ferris (born 1969)Canadian actress
Michelle Ferris (born 1976)Australian cyclist
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930)American painter
Sam Ferris (1900–1980)British long-distance runner
Elizabeth Ferris (1940–2012)English diver
Kostas Ferris (born 1935)Greek film director

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

Surnames like Ferris

Also a first name

Ferris has been given to 3,149 American babies as a first name since 1893, peaking in 2024. 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.