Foster
At the 2020 census, 218,824 Americans bore the surname Foster — 104th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 1,366.
By the numbers
- People
- 218,824
- Rank
- 104th
- How common
- 1 in 1,366
- Per 100,000
- 73.2
Where the name comes from
Origin an occupational name
English surname, reduced from Forster; also from the noun foster.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Foster described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Foster
- Jodie Foster (born 1962)American actress and filmmaker
- Norman Foster (born 1935)British architect
- Ben Foster (born 1983)English association football player
- Ben Foster (born 1980)American actor
- David Foster (born 1949)Canadian musician, record producer, songwriter
- Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944)American soprano, renowned for her lack of musical skill and singing ability
- Stephen Foster (1826–1864)American songwriter
- Lyle Foster (born 2000)South African association football player
People named Foster with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Foster
Also a first name
Foster has been given to 13,408 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2025. 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.