Melvin

18,641 people in the United States were counted with the surname Melvin in the 2020 census, making it the 1,890th most common in the country. That is about one person in 16,000.

By the numbers

People: 18,641
Rank: 1,890th
How common: 1 in 16,000
Per 100,000: 6.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Old French

Variant of the Scottish surname Melville, from a place name Malleville in Normandy, from Latin mala (“bad”) + Old French ville (“settlement”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 65.3%
Black, not Hispanic 26.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Melvin

Leland D. Melvin (born 1964)NASA astronaut and engineer
Murray Melvin (1932–2023)British actor
Allan Melvin (1923–2008)American actor
Eric Melvin (born 1966)American punk musician
Rachel Melvin (born 1985)American actress

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

Surnames like Melvin

Also a first name

Melvin has been given to 247,075 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1928. 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.