Lindsay

At the 2020 census, 32,075 Americans bore the surname Lindsay — 1,073rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 9,319.

By the numbers

People: 32,075
Rank: 1,073rd
How common: 1 in 9,319
Per 100,000: 10.7

Where the name comes from

From Lindsey in Lincolnshire, from Old English Lindesēġe, Lindesīġe (“Isle of Lind”), the Old English name of the city of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, in which "Lind" comes from the Common Brittonic form of the name of Lincoln and "isle" refers to Lincoln being surrounded by fenland; from cel-bry-pro *llɨnn (“pool”), from Proto-Celtic *lindos (“lake, liquid”), in reference to the Brayford + ; cf.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.1%
Black, not Hispanic 21.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Lindsay

Jeff Lindsay (born 1952)American playwright and crime novelist
Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)American poet
Margaret Lindsay (1910–1981)American actress
Joan Lindsay (1896–1984)Australian writer
Ted Lindsay (1925–2019)Canadian ice hockey player
John Lindsay (1921–2000)American politician
Robert Lindsay (1890–1958)British sprinter
Arto Lindsay (born 1953)American musician

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

Surnames like Lindsay

Also a first name

Lindsay has been given to 135,501 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1983. 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.