Paterson

At the 2020 census, 6,499 Americans bore the surname Paterson — 5,191st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 46,000.

By the numbers

People: 6,499
Rank: 5,191st
How common: 1 in 46,000
Per 100,000: 2.2

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From a Middle English short form.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 83.2%
Black, not Hispanic 8.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Paterson

David Paterson (born 1954)55th Governor of New York from 2008 to 2010
Katherine Paterson (born 1932)American children's writer born and mainly raised in China
Andrew Barton Paterson (1864–1941)Australian journalist, author and poet
William Paterson (1745–1806)Governor of New Jersey
Bill Paterson (born 1945)Scottish actor
Callum Paterson (born 1994)Scottish association football player
Martin Paterson (born 1987)British footballer
Isabel Paterson (1886–1961)author and editor

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

Surnames like Paterson

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.