Pearson

At the 2020 census, 97,562 Americans bore the surname Pearson — 317th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,064.

By the numbers

People: 97,562
Rank: 317th
How common: 1 in 3,064
Per 100,000: 32.6

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.4%
Black, not Hispanic 21.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Pearson

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972)14th Prime Minister of Canada, from 1963 to 1968
Karl Pearson (1857–1936)English mathematician, biometrician, and eugenicist
Sally Pearson (born 1986)Australian short-distance runner and hurdler
Nigel Pearson (born 1963)English association football player and manager
April Pearson (born 1989)British actress
Egon Pearson (1895–1980)British statistician
Virginia Pearson (1886–1958)American stage and film actress
Adam Pearson (born 1985)British actor

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

Surnames like Pearson

Also a first name

Pearson has been given to 1,678 American babies as a first name since 1898, peaking in 2019. 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.