Muir

At the 2020 census, 11,239 Americans bore the surname Muir — 3,123rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 26,600.

By the numbers

People: 11,239
Rank: 3,123rd
How common: 1 in 26,600
Per 100,000: 3.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Scots

From Scots muir (“moor”). A derivation from Scottish Gaelic muir (“ocean”) has also been suggested.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 85.1%
Black, not Hispanic 5.9%
Hispanic or Latino 4.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Muir

John Muir (1838–1914)Scottish-American naturalist
Laura Muir (born 1993)British middle- and long-distance runner
William Muir (1819–1905)Scottish Orientalist and colonial administrator
Jean Muir (1911–1996)American actress and educator
Jamie Muir (1942–2025)British musician
David Muir (born 1973)American broadcast journalist
Edwin Muir (1887–1959)British poet, novelist and translator
Mike Muir (born 1963)American singer

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

Surnames like Muir

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.