Rao

At the 2020 census, 15,053 Americans bore the surname Rao — 2,363rd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 19,900.

By the numbers

People: 15,053
Rank: 2,363rd
How common: 1 in 19,900
Per 100,000: 5.0

Where the name comes from

As an Italian surname, reduced from Radulfo. See Rolf, Ralph, Raul, etc.

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 81.6%
White, not Hispanic 13.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.6%
Hispanic or Latino 1.1%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Rao

Amrita Rao (born 1981)Indian actress and model
Aditi Rao Hydari (born 1986)Indian actress
Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao (1920–2023)Indian-American mathematician
Kiran Rao (born 1973)Indian film director, screenwriter and film producer
Akkineni Nageswara Rao (1923–2014)Indian film actor and producer
Raja Rao (1908–2006)Indian-born English writer
K. Chandrashekar Rao (born 1954)Leader of opposition in the Telangana Legislative Assembly
Dileep Rao (born 1973)American actor

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

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.