Kelly

At the 2020 census, 255,516 Americans bore the surname Kelly — 80th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 1,170.

By the numbers

People: 255,516
Rank: 80th
How common: 1 in 1,170
Per 100,000: 85.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 75.6%
Black, not Hispanic 15.8%
Hispanic or Latino 3.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Kelly

Grace Kelly (1929–1982)American actress and Princess consort of Monaco
R. Kelly (born 1967)American singer, songwriter, record producer, sex offender
Gene Kelly (1912–1996)American dancer, actor, singer, director and choreographer
Moira Kelly (born 1968)American actress
Ned Kelly (1854–1880)Australian bushranger
Machine Gun Kelly (born 1990)American musician
Petra Kelly (1947–1992)German politician and activist
Martin Kelly (born 1990)English association football player

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

Surnames like Kelly

Also a first name

Kelly has been given to 556,365 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1977. 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.