Mars

At the 2020 census, 4,505 Americans bore the surname Mars — 7,144th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 66,300.

By the numbers

People: 4,505
Rank: 7,144th
How common: 1 in 66,300
Per 100,000: 1.5

Where the name comes from

Possibly a variant of Marrs, itself from Marr with post-medieval excrescent -s.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 62.0%
Black, not Hispanic 26.1%
Hispanic or Latino 5.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Mars

Mick Mars (born 1951)American guitarist
Kenneth Mars (1935–2011)American actor
Jacqueline Mars (born 1939)American billionaire and philanthropist, member of Mars family of candy fame
Betty Mars (1944–1989)actress and singer from France
Franklin Clarence Mars (1883–1934)American businessman
Melissa Mars (born 1979)French actress and singer
Forrest Mars (1904–1999)American businessman
John Franklyn Mars (born 1935)American businessman

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

Surnames like Mars

Also a first name

Mars has been given to 1,522 American babies as a first name since 1923, peaking in 2023. 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.