McSwain

At the 2020 census, 5,989 Americans bore the surname McSwain — 5,604th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 49,900.

By the numbers

People: 5,989
Rank: 5,604th
How common: 1 in 49,900
Per 100,000: 2.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic, from Old Norse

Probably an Anglicized form of Scottish Gaelic Mac Suibhne, like McSweeney or a Gaelic patronymic based on Old Norse sveinn (“boy, servant”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 63.0%
Black, not Hispanic 29.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 2.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Surnames like McSwain

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.