Lazarus

4,257 people in the United States were counted with the surname Lazarus in the 2020 census, making it the 7,532nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 70,200.

By the numbers

People: 4,257
Rank: 7,532nd
How common: 1 in 70,200
Per 100,000: 1.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Hebrew

From Latin Lazarus, from Koine Greek Λᾱ́ζᾱρος, the given name of Biblical figures mentioned in Luke 16 and John 12, from Biblical Hebrew אֶלְעָזָר, a given name shared by various people in the Hebrew Bible and literally meaning "God has helped".

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 77.7%
Black, not Hispanic 8.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 5.0%
Hispanic or Latino 4.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Lazarus

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)American poet
Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903)German psychologist and philosopher

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

Surnames like Lazarus

Also a first name

Lazarus has been given to 4,043 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 2025. 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.