Jones

At the 2020 census, 1,383,250 Americans bore the surname Jones — 5th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 216.

By the numbers

People: 1,383,250
Rank: 5th
How common: 1 in 216
Per 100,000: 462.8

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

Genitive of John.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 53.1%
Black, not Hispanic 37.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Jones

Tommy Lee Jones (born 1946)American actor and film director
Norah Jones (born 1979)American musician
Quincy Jones (1933–2024)American record producer and composer
Mary Harris Jones (1830–1930)Irish-born American labor and community organizer
Felicity Jones (born 1983)British actress
Jennifer Jones (1919–2009)American actress
Tom Jones (born 1940)Welsh singer
James Earl Jones (1931–2024)American actor

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

Surnames like Jones

Also a first name

Jones has been given to 5,495 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2025. 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.