Humanverse

Mayer

At the 2020 census, 37,738 Americans bore the surname Mayer — 911th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 7,920.

By the numbers

People
37,738
Rank
911th
How common
1 in 7,920
Per 100,000
12.6

Where the name comes from

Origin German

As an English surname, variant of Mear, from the noun mere (both senses).

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

Who bears the name

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

Notable people called Mayer

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

Surnames like Mayer

Also a first name

Mayer has been given to 2,613 American babies as a first name since 1912, peaking in 2021. 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.