Knox

At the 2020 census, 43,026 Americans bore the surname Knox — 782nd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 6,947.

By the numbers

People: 43,026
Rank: 782nd
How common: 1 in 6,947
Per 100,000: 14.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 61.3%
Black, not Hispanic 29.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Knox

John Knox (1514–1572)Scottish clergyman, writer and historian
Alexander Knox (1907–1995)Canadian actor and author of adventure novels
Henry Knox (1750–1806)American general and Secretary of War
Ronald Knox (1888–1957)English priest and theologian
Robert Knox (1791–1862)Scottish physician, anatomist, zoologist and ethnologist
Philander C. Knox (1853–1921)American lawyer, banker, and politician
Frank Knox (1874–1944)47th Secretary of the Navy of the United States
Rob Knox (1989–2008)British actor

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

Surnames like Knox

Also a first name

Knox has been given to 24,382 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 2022. 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.