Hoover

Hoover is the 580th most common surname in the United States, shared by 57,000 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 5,244.

By the numbers

People: 57,000
Rank: 580th
How common: 1 in 5,244
Per 100,000: 19.1

Where the name comes from

Origin German

The surname is an anglicization of German Huber or Low German Hufer, originally designating a landowner or a prosperous small-scale farmer. The common noun and verb are taken from the brand name of one of the first vacuum cleaners (see hoover).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 89.4%
Black, not Hispanic 3.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.3%
Hispanic or Latino 2.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Hoover

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)president of the United States from 1929 to 1933
J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972)American law enforcement administrator
Lou Henry Hoover (1874–1944)First Lady of the United States from 1929 to 1933
Colleen Hoover (born 1979)American author
Mikaela Hoover (born 1984)American actress
Erna Schneider Hoover (born 1926)American mathematician
Nan Hoover (1931–2008)American-Dutch artist

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

Surnames like Hoover

Also a first name

Hoover has been given to 1,127 American babies as a first name since 1913, peaking in 1928. 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.