Reed

268,584 people in the United States were counted with the surname Reed in the 2020 census, making it the 75th most common in the country. That is about one person in 1,113.

By the numbers

People: 268,584
Rank: 75th
How common: 1 in 1,113
Per 100,000: 89.9

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

As an English and Scottish surname, from the adjective red.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 68.5%
Black, not Hispanic 21.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Reed

Lou Reed (1942–2013)American rock musician
Donna Reed (1921–1986)American film and television actress
Nikki Reed (born 1988)American actress
John Reed (1887–1920)American journalist, poet, and communist activist
Carol Reed (1906–1976)English film director
Oliver Reed (1938–1999)British actor
Crystal Reed (born 1985)American actress
Willis Reed (1942–2023)American basketball player

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

Surnames like Reed

Also a first name

Reed has been given to 36,977 American babies as a first name since 1881, peaking in 2014. 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.