Peterson

At the 2020 census, 265,150 Americans bore the surname Peterson — 77th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 1,127.

By the numbers

People: 265,150
Rank: 77th
How common: 1 in 1,127
Per 100,000: 88.7

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

English, Scottish, and German surname. Found parallel in many other languages, such as Norwegian and Danish Pedersen, Pettersen, Polish Piotrowicz, Slovene Petrič, Petrovčič, Petrovič, Petric, Petrovic, etc. Also Americanized from Swedish Petersson, Pettersson.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 81.9%
Black, not Hispanic 9.7%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.5%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Peterson

Jordan Peterson (born 1962)Canadian clinical psychologist, author, and political commentator and manosphere activist
Oscar Peterson (1925–2007)Canadian jazz pianist
Ronnie Peterson (1944–1978)Swedish racing driver
Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822)Estonian writer
Cassandra Peterson (born 1951)American actress
Rebecca Peterson (born 1995)Swedish tennis player
Donald H. Peterson (1933–2018)American astronaut
Amanda Peterson (1971–2015)American actress

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

Surnames like Peterson

Also a first name

Peterson has been given to 819 American babies as a first name since 1950, peaking in 1989. 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.