Laurence

At the 2020 census, 2,803 Americans bore the surname Laurence — 10,856th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 107,000.

By the numbers

People: 2,803
Rank: 10,856th
How common: 1 in 107,000
Per 100,000: 0.94

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From the name of a third century Roman martyr, "a person from Laurentum", the place name possibly derived from laurus (“laurel”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 78.6%
Black, not Hispanic 8.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Hispanic or Latino 4.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%

Surnames like Laurence

Also a first name

Laurence has been given to 40,215 American babies as a first name since 1880, 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.