Gates

51,298 people in the United States were counted with the surname Gates in the 2020 census, making it the 648th most common in the country. That is about one person in 5,827.

By the numbers

People: 51,298
Rank: 648th
How common: 1 in 5,827
Per 100,000: 17.2

Where the name comes from

From gate. A topographic name for someone who lived by the gates of a medieval walled town.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 72.0%
Black, not Hispanic 18.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Gates

Bill Gates (born 1955)American businessman, investor, and philanthropist
Melinda Gates (born 1964)American philanthropist
Robert Gates (born 1943)CIA director, U.S. Secretary of Defense, and university president
Synyster Gates (born 1981)American guitarist
Horatio Gates (1727–1806)American general in the American Revolutionary War
Gareth Gates (born 1984)British singer
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (born 1950)American literary critic, professor and historian
Kevin Gates (born 1986)American rapper

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

Surnames like Gates

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.