Penn
18,879 people in the United States were counted with the surname Penn in the 2020 census, making it the 1,866th most common in the country. That is about one person in 15,800.
By the numbers
- People
- 18,879
- Rank
- 1,866th
- How common
- 1 in 15,800
- Per 100,000
- 6.3
Where the name comes from
As an English surname, named after various places such as Penn in Buckinghamshire or Staffordshire, of cel-bry origin, from cel-bry-pro *penn (“(hill) top, head”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Penn described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Penn
- Sean Penn (born 1960)American actor
- William Penn (1644–1718)English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania
- Kal Penn (born 1977)American actor, author, and former White House staff member in the Barack Obama administration
- Arthur Penn (1922–2010)American producer and director
- Chris Penn (1965–2006)American actor
- Irving Penn (1917–2009)American photographer and photojournalist
- Zak Penn (born 1968)American screenwriter
- Dylan Penn (born 1991)American model and actress
People named Penn with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Penn
Also a first name
Penn has been given to 1,230 American babies as a first name since 1915, peaking in 2014. 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.