Lanier

At the 2020 census, 19,774 Americans bore the surname Lanier — 1,769th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 15,100.

By the numbers

People: 19,774
Rank: 1,769th
How common: 1 in 15,100
Per 100,000: 6.6

Where the name comes from

From Old French lanier, from laine (“wool”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 64.0%
Black, not Hispanic 27.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
Hispanic or Latino 2.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Lanier

Jaron Lanier (born 1960)American computer scientist, musician, and author
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)American musician and poet
Bob Lanier (1948–2022)American basketball player
Emilia Lanier (1569–1645)English poet
Allen Lanier (1946–2013)American musician

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

Surnames like Lanier

Also a first name

Lanier has been given to 1,217 American babies as a first name since 1914, peaking in 1952. 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.