Pepper

Pepper is the 3,319th most common surname in the United States, shared by 10,643 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 28,100.

By the numbers

People: 10,643
Rank: 3,319th
How common: 1 in 28,100
Per 100,000: 3.6

Where the name comes from

Origin an occupational name

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 86.0%
Black, not Hispanic 5.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Pepper

Barry Pepper (born 1970)Canadian actor
Art Pepper (1925–1982)American saxophonist
Jeannie Pepper (born 1958)American adult film actress
Beverly Pepper (1922–2020)American artist
Claude Pepper (1900–1989)American politician
John Pepper (1886–1938)Hungarian politician
Barbara Pepper (1915–1969)American actress
Edward Pepper (1879–1960)gymnast

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

Surnames like Pepper

Also a first name

Pepper has been given to 3,551 American babies as a first name since 1937, 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.