Keith
At the 2020 census, 45,259 Americans bore the surname Keith — 749th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 6,604.
By the numbers
- People
- 45,259
- Rank
- 749th
- How common
- 1 in 6,604
- Per 100,000
- 15.1
Where the name comes from
As a Scottish surname, from the placename in Moray, Scotland, from Scottish Gaelic Cèith, meaning "wood" or "from the battleground, " which is probably borrowed from xpi *ᚉᚓᚈ meaning "wood", or a forest, from cel-bry-pro *koɨd.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Keith described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Keith
- Brian Keith (1921–1997)American actor
- Toby Keith (1961–2024)American country music singer and actor
- David Keith (born 1954)American actor and film director
- Duncan Keith (born 1983)Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman
- Penelope Keith (1940–2026)English actress
- Robert Keith (1898–1966)American actor
- Ian Keith (1899–1960)actor
- Arthur Keith (1866–1955)British anatomist and anthropologist
People named Keith with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Keith
Also a first name
Keith has been given to 440,123 American babies as a first name since 1888, peaking in 1957. 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.