Melville

4,175 people in the United States were counted with the surname Melville in the 2020 census, making it the 7,641st most common in the country. That is about one person in 71,600.

By the numbers

People: 4,175
Rank: 7,641st
How common: 1 in 71,600
Per 100,000: 1.4

Where the name comes from

Origin Old French

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 78.4%
Black, not Hispanic 12.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891)American writer and poet
Jean-Pierre Melville (1917–1973)French filmmaker and actor
Andy Melville (born 1968)Welsh footballer
Pauline Melville (born 1948)Guyanese writer

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

Surnames like Melville

Also a first name

Melville has been given to 2,283 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1918. 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.