Germany

Germany is the 8,526th most common surname in the United States, shared by 3,705 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 80,700.

By the numbers

People: 3,705
Rank: 8,526th
How common: 1 in 80,700
Per 100,000: 1.2

Where the name comes from

From Middle English Germanie, from Old English Germanie & Germania, from Latin Germānia (“land of the Germans”), from Germānī, a people living around and east of the Rhine first attested in the works of Julius Caesar and of uncertain etymology. The exonym was said by Strabo to derive from germānus (“close kin; genuine”), making it cognate with germane and german, but this seems unsupported.

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

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 50.4%
White, not Hispanic 40.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Surnames like Germany

Also a first name

Germany has been given to 723 American babies as a first name since 1979, 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.