McPherson

McPherson is the 979th most common surname in the United States, shared by 35,248 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 8,480.

By the numbers

People: 35,248
Rank: 979th
How common: 1 in 8,480
Per 100,000: 11.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic

Anglicized form of Scottish Gaelic Mac a' Phearsain (“son of the parson”), from pearsan (“parson”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 70.5%
Black, not Hispanic 20.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called McPherson

Patricia McPherson (born 1954)American actress
Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944)Canadian-American evangelist and media celebrity
Dave McPherson (born 1964)Scottish footballer
Stephenie Ann McPherson (born 1988)Jamaican sprinter
Paige McPherson (born 1990)American taekwondo practitioner
James Alan McPherson (1943–2016)American short story writer and essayist
James B. McPherson (1828–1864)career officer of the United States Army
Charles McPherson (born 1939)American jazz alto saxophonist

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

Surnames like McPherson

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.