Fleming

At the 2020 census, 86,848 Americans bore the surname Fleming — 350th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,442.

By the numbers

People: 86,848
Rank: 350th
How common: 1 in 3,442
Per 100,000: 29.1

Where the name comes from

Origin a nickname, from an ethnonym

From Middle English flameng, from late Old Norse Flæmingi, from Old Norse Flǽmingr, Middle Dutch Vlaminc, Vleminc, from Old Frisian (unattested) (compare West Frisian Flaming), from Proto-Germanic *flaumaz (“flowing, current (water)”) and the patronymic suffix *-ingaz (“belonging to, descended from”). More at Flanders.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.5%
Black, not Hispanic 22.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Fleming

Alexander Fleming (1881–1955)Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, botanist, and Nobel laureate
Ian Fleming (1908–1964)British author
Victor Fleming (1889–1949)American film director, cinematographer, and producer
Williamina Fleming (1857–1911)astronoma escocesa
John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945)English electrical engineer and physicist
Sandford Fleming (1827–1915)Scottish-born Canadian engineer and inventor
Renée Fleming (born 1959)American opera soprano
Rhonda Fleming (1923–2020)American actress

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

Surnames like Fleming

Also a first name

Fleming has been given to 1,017 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1917. 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.