French
At the 2020 census, 61,329 Americans bore the surname French — 539th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 4,874.
By the numbers
- People
- 61,329
- Rank
- 539th
- How common
- 1 in 4,874
- Per 100,000
- 20.5
Where the name comes from
Origin an ethnonym
Frensch, Frensc, Frenshe, Frenk, Franche, from Old English Frenċisċ (“Frankish, French”), from Proto-West Germanic *Frankisk (“Frankish”), equivalent to (compare Frankish).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname French described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called French
- Dawn French (born 1957)British actress, comedian and writer
- John French, 1st Earl of Ypres (1852–1925)Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army
- Daniel Chester French (1850–1931)American sculptor
- Marilyn French (1929–2009)Novelist, critic
- Tana French (born 1973)American-Irish writer and theatrical actress
- Victor French (1934–1989)American actor and director
- Kate French (born 1991)British modern pentathlete
- Nicki French (born 1964)British singer
People named French with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like French
Also a first name
French has been given to 1,129 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 1915. 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.