Nolan

At the 2020 census, 43,879 Americans bore the surname Nolan — 770th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 6,812.

By the numbers

People: 43,879
Rank: 770th
How common: 1 in 6,812
Per 100,000: 14.7

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

Anglicized from Irish Ó Nualláin, diminutive of nuall (“chariot-fighter, champion”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.3%
Black, not Hispanic 7.2%
Hispanic or Latino 4.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Nolan

Jonathan Nolan (born 1976)British-American filmmaker
Kevin Nolan (born 1982)English association football player and manager
Sidney Nolan (1917–1992)Australian artist
Lloyd Nolan (1902–1985)American actor
Owen Nolan (born 1972)Canadian ice hockey player
Jeanette Nolan (1911–1998)American actress
Norma Nolan (1938–2025)Argentine model
Margaret Nolan (1943–2020)English actress and model

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

Surnames like Nolan

Also a first name

Nolan has been given to 136,061 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 2015. 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.