Jefferson

53,646 people in the United States were counted with the surname Jefferson in the 2020 census, making it the 615th most common in the country. That is about one person in 5,572.

By the numbers

People: 53,646
Rank: 615th
How common: 1 in 5,572
Per 100,000: 18.0

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

. The placenames in the United States are named for Thomas Jefferson.

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

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 71.6%
White, not Hispanic 16.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)Founding Father, U.S. president from 1801 to 1809
Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772–1836)First Lady of the United States from 1801 to 1809
Richard Jefferson (born 1980)American basketball player
Martha Jefferson (1748–1782)First lady of Virginia, wife of Thomas Jefferson
Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929)American blues singer and guitarist
Al Jefferson (born 1985)American basketball player
Jefferson Tabinas (born 1998)Filipino association football player
Marshall Jefferson (born 1959)American DJ and record producer

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

Surnames like Jefferson

Also a first name

Jefferson has been given to 24,440 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2009. 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.