Ivy

At the 2020 census, 13,218 Americans bore the surname Ivy — 2,665th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 22,600.

By the numbers

People: 13,218
Rank: 2,665th
How common: 1 in 22,600
Per 100,000: 4.4

Where the name comes from

Origin English

From ivy, the name of a plant. An ivy branch used to be hung outside an establishment to advertise that it sold alcohol, so it may originally been an occupationational surname for the proprietor of such an establishment.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 52.5%
Black, not Hispanic 37.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Ivy

Madison Ivy (born 1989)German-American pornographic actress

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

Also a first name

Ivy has been given to 86,173 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2024. 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.