Ransom

At the 2020 census, 16,469 Americans bore the surname Ransom — 2,144th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 18,100.

By the numbers

People: 16,469
Rank: 2,144th
How common: 1 in 18,100
Per 100,000: 5.5

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 52.7%
Black, not Hispanic 36.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Ransom

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)American poet

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

Surnames like Ransom

Also a first name

Ransom has been given to 4,869 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2022. 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.