Percival

3,169 people in the United States were counted with the surname Percival in the 2020 census, making it the 9,768th most common in the country. That is about one person in 94,300.

By the numbers

People: 3,169
Rank: 9,768th
How common: 1 in 94,300
Per 100,000: 1.1

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

From Old French Perceval, name of a knight in a twelfth century Arthurian romance by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 79.9%
Black, not Hispanic 8.9%
Hispanic or Latino 5.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Percival

Arthur Percival (1887–1966)British army officer in the First and Second World Wars
Ria Percival (born 1989)New Zealand association football player
Lance Percival (1933–2015)British actor and comedian

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

Surnames like Percival

Also a first name

Percival has been given to 1,466 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2025. 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.