Poindexter

10,762 people in the United States were counted with the surname Poindexter in the 2020 census, making it the 3,273rd most common in the country. That is about one person in 27,800.

By the numbers

People: 10,762
Rank: 3,273rd
How common: 1 in 27,800
Per 100,000: 3.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Jersey Norman

From nrf-jer Poingdestre. The sense is from the character of the same name in the 1959 animated television series Felix the Cat, which is a revival of the original Felix the Cat animated films from 1919 to 1936. Its first use appears in the publication University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Slang.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 50.1%
Black, not Hispanic 40.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.5%
Hispanic or Latino 3.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Poindexter

Alan G. Poindexter (1961–2012)American test pilot and astronaut
John Poindexter (born 1936)retired American naval officer and Department of Defense official

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

Surnames like Poindexter

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.