Isaac

At the 2020 census, 19,157 Americans bore the surname Isaac — 1,838th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 15,600.

By the numbers

People: 19,157
Rank: 1,838th
How common: 1 in 15,600
Per 100,000: 6.4

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From Middle English Ysaac, from Latin Isaac, from Ancient Greek Ἰσαάκ, from Hebrew יצחק. Explained in Genesis as referring to his mother Sarah’s laughing when she was told she would have a son at her old age. The verb is masculine, however, perhaps due to its use as a boy’s name.

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

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 39.8%
White, not Hispanic 37.4%
Hispanic or Latino 10.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 5.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 2.8%

Notable people called Isaac

Oscar Isaac (born 1979)Guatemalan-American actor
Heinrich Isaac (1450–1517)Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer
Jonathan Isaac (born 1997)American basketball player
James Isaac (1960–2012)American film director
Jules Isaac (1877–1963)Jewish French historian

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

Surnames like Isaac

Also a first name

Isaac has been given to 332,292 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2007. 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.