Neil

At the 2020 census, 9,424 Americans bore the surname Neil — 3,671st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 31,700.

By the numbers

People: 9,424
Rank: 3,671st
How common: 1 in 31,700
Per 100,000: 3.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

Anglicized form of /Irish Niall.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 76.5%
Black, not Hispanic 14.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Neil

Vince Neil (born 1961)American singer
Alex Neil (born 1981)Scottish association football manager and former player
Fred Neil (1936–2001)American recording artist, singer, songwriter
Andrew Neil (born 1949)Scottish journalist and broadcaster
Simon Neil (born 1979)Scottish singer, guitarist and songwriter

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

Surnames like Neil

Also a first name

Neil has been given to 105,254 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1954. 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.