Lake

Lake is the 1,108th most common surname in the United States, shared by 31,187 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 9,584.

By the numbers

People: 31,187
Rank: 1,108th
How common: 1 in 9,584
Per 100,000: 10.4

Where the name comes from

Derived from the noun lake.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 77.9%
Black, not Hispanic 12.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%

Notable people called Lake

Veronica Lake (1922–1973)American actress
Greg Lake (1947–2016)English bassist, guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and producer
Louise Lake-Tack (born 1944)Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda
Ricki Lake (born 1968)American television host and actress
Alice Lake (1895–1967)actress
Don Lake (born 1956)Canadian actor, writer, and television producer
Anthony Lake (born 1939)American academic and diplomat
Sam Lake (born 1970)Finnish video game writer

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

Surnames like Lake

Also a first name

Lake has been given to 3,924 American babies as a first name since 1891, peaking in 2024. 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.