Kerr

43,118 people in the United States were counted with the surname Kerr in the 2020 census, making it the 780th most common in the country. That is about one person in 6,932.

By the numbers

People: 43,118
Rank: 780th
How common: 1 in 6,932
Per 100,000: 14.4

Where the name comes from

As an English and Scottish topographic surname for someone who lived by a patch of wet ground overgrown with brushwood, from Middle English kerr (“brushwood”), possibly related to Irish Gaelic ceàrr (“left-handed”) and/or Old Norse kjarr.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 83.3%
Black, not Hispanic 8.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Kerr

Deborah Kerr (1921–2007)British actress
Miranda Kerr (born 1983)Australian model
Steve Kerr (born 1965)American basketball player and coach
Sam Kerr (born 1993)Australian soccer player
John Kerr (1824–1907)Scottish physicist and pioneer in the field of electro-optics
Josh Kerr (born 1997)Scottish runner, record holder
Hamish Kerr (born 1996)New Zealand athletics competitor
Judith Kerr (1923–2019)British writer and illustrator

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

Surnames like Kerr

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.