Fife

6,697 people in the United States were counted with the surname Fife in the 2020 census, making it the 5,073rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 44,600.

By the numbers

People: 6,697
Rank: 5,073rd
How common: 1 in 44,600
Per 100,000: 2.2

Where the name comes from

Borrowed from Scottish Gaelic Fìobha, said to date back to the eponym Fib, one of the seven sons of the legendary xpi king Cruithne. Possibly related to the Uip attested in the Pictish kings lists, in turn possibly related to the Latin Vepogenus, in which the first element is the cel-bry-pro predecessor of Welsh gwep (“face”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.4%
Black, not Hispanic 6.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%

Surnames like Fife

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.