Lance

Lance is the 2,869th most common surname in the United States, shared by 12,256 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 24,400.

By the numbers

People: 12,256
Rank: 2,869th
How common: 1 in 24,400
Per 100,000: 4.1

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

The surname is derived from a medieval given name Lanzo, short form of names beginning with the Germanic element *land; see land.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 83.1%
Black, not Hispanic 7.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Lance

Keisha Lance Bottoms (born 1970)American politician
James Lance (born 1974)British actor
Pascal Lance (born 1964)French cyclist
Leonard Lance (born 1952)American politician

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

Surnames like Lance

Also a first name

Lance has been given to 106,184 American babies as a first name since 1899, peaking in 1970. 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.