Neill

At the 2020 census, 8,623 Americans bore the surname Neill — 3,997th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 34,700.

By the numbers

People: 8,623
Rank: 3,997th
How common: 1 in 34,700
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish, a given name

Variant spelling of Neil, anglicised form of /Irish Niall.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 89.9%
Hispanic or Latino 4.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
Black, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Neill

Sam Neill (1947–2026)New Zealand actor
Lucas Neill (born 1978)Australian association football player
A. S. Neill (1883–1973)Scottish educator and theorist
Noel Neill (1920–2016)American actress
Terry Neill (1942–2022)Northern Irish football player and manager
James Neill (1860–1931)actor
Roy William Neill (1887–1946)Irish-American film director
Thomas Neill (born 2002)Australian swimmer

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

Surnames like Neill

Also a first name

Neill has been given to 1,834 American babies as a first name since 1912, peaking in 1950. 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.