Holmes

Holmes is the 178th most common surname in the United States, shared by 150,877 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 1,981.

By the numbers

People: 150,877
Rank: 178th
How common: 1 in 1,981
Per 100,000: 50.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

From holme, variant of holm (“islet”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 54.7%
Black, not Hispanic 36.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Holmes

Katie Holmes (born 1978)American actress
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)American poet and physician
Elizabeth Holmes (born 1984)American biotechnology entrepreneur convicted of fraud
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935)American jurist (1841–1935); US Supreme Court justice from 1902 to 1932
Kelly Holmes (born 1970)British middle distance athlete and Olympic gold medallist
John Holmes (1944–1988)American pornographic actor
Larry Holmes (born 1949)American boxer
Arthur Holmes (1890–1965)English geologist

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

Surnames like Holmes

Also a first name

Holmes has been given to 610 American babies as a first name since 1880, 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.