Killian

At the 2020 census, 11,577 Americans bore the surname Killian — 3,029th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 25,800.

By the numbers

People: 11,577
Rank: 3,029th
How common: 1 in 25,800
Per 100,000: 3.9

Where the name comes from

An anglicized spelling of Irish Cillian.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Black, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Killian

Gustav Killian (1860–1921)German laryngologist and founder of bronchoscopy

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

Surnames like Killian

Also a first name

Killian has been given to 16,834 American babies as a first name since 1915, peaking in 2017. 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.