Gifford

18,730 people in the United States were counted with the surname Gifford in the 2020 census, making it the 1,881st most common in the country. That is about one person in 16,000.

By the numbers

People: 18,730
Rank: 1,881st
How common: 1 in 16,000
Per 100,000: 6.3

Where the name comes from

Habitational surname for someone from Broughton Gifford, from the Old English personal name *Gydda + -ing (“belonging to”) + ford (“ford”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 88.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Black, not Hispanic 2.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Gifford

Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880)American painter
Frances Gifford (1920–1994)American actress
Kathie Lee Gifford (born 1953)French-born American television presenter, singer, songwriter, occasional actress and author
Barry Gifford (born 1946)American novelist, poet, screenwriter, biographer, editor
Frank Gifford (1930–2015)American football player, television sportscaster

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

Surnames like Gifford

Giffin

Also a first name

Gifford has been given to 1,452 American babies as a first name since 1891, peaking in 1920. 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.