Mears

9,452 people in the United States were counted with the surname Mears in the 2020 census, making it the 3,660th most common in the country. That is about one person in 31,600.

By the numbers

People: 9,452
Rank: 3,660th
How common: 1 in 31,600
Per 100,000: 3.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

As an English surname, variant of Mear, topographic surname for someone who lived by a pond, from Old English mere (“lake, pool”), or near a boundary, from ġemǣre (“boundary, border”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.2%
Black, not Hispanic 6.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Mears

Derek Mears (born 1972)American actor
Chris Mears (born 1993)British diver and record producer
Tyrone Mears (born 1983)English association football player
Rick Mears (born 1951)American racecar driver

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

Surnames like Mears

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.