Muhammad

20,614 people in the United States were counted with the surname Muhammad in the 2020 census, making it the 1,704th most common in the country. That is about one person in 14,500.

By the numbers

People: 20,614
Rank: 1,704th
How common: 1 in 14,500
Per 100,000: 6.9

Where the name comes from

Origin Arabic

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

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 77.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 9.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.5%
White, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Muhammad

Dalilah Muhammad (born 1990)American hurdler
Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975)American religious leader
Ibtihaj Muhammad (born 1985)American fencer
Al-Nasir Muhammad (1284–1341)Sultan of Egypt from 1293 to 1294
Ali Mahdi Muhammad (1939–2021)Somali entrepreneur and politician
Belal Muhammad (born 1988)American mixed martial artist
Asia Muhammad (born 1991)US American tennis player
Wallace Fard MuhammadAmerican Islamic minister

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

Also a first name

Muhammad has been given to 21,962 American babies as a first name since 1929, peaking in 2025. 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.