Kingsley

7,959 people in the United States were counted with the surname Kingsley in the 2020 census, making it the 4,317th most common in the country. That is about one person in 37,600.

By the numbers

People: 7,959
Rank: 4,317th
How common: 1 in 37,600
Per 100,000: 2.7

Where the name comes from

"The king's wood or clearing", from Old English cynges, genitive of cyng (“king”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.4%
Hispanic or Latino 4.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.3%
Black, not Hispanic 2.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Kingsley

Ben Kingsley (born 1943)English actor
Charles Kingsley (1819–1875)British clergyman, historian and novelist
Mary Kingsley (1862–1900)British ethnographer, scientific writer and explorer
Gershon Kingsley (1922–2019)American composer and musician
Sidney Kingsley (1906–1995)American writer
Stephen Kingsley (born 1994)Scottish footballer
Henry Kingsley (1830–1876)British writer

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

Surnames like Kingsley

Also a first name

Kingsley has been given to 8,874 American babies as a first name since 1907, peaking in 2016. 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.