Parsley

At the 2020 census, 5,885 Americans bore the surname Parsley — 5,680th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 50,800.

By the numbers

People: 5,885
Rank: 5,680th
How common: 1 in 50,800
Per 100,000: 2.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Old French

Altered form, later assimilated by folk etymology to the herb name parsley, of the medieval family name Passelewe, from Old French passer (“to pass”) + la (“the”) + ewe (“water”), probably a nickname for a ferryman or a person who travelled overseas.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 88.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.1%
Black, not Hispanic 3.9%
Hispanic or Latino 2.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Surnames like Parsley

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.