Ren

Ren is the 3,943rd most common surname in the United States, shared by 8,740 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 34,200.

By the numbers

People: 8,740
Rank: 3,943rd
How common: 1 in 34,200
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

Origin Chinese

From the atonal cmn-pinyin romanization of the cmn pronunciation of Chinese 妊, an ancient surname also used as an adjective meaning "pregnant".

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

Who bears the name

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

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 91.0%
White, not Hispanic 6.4%
Hispanic or Latino 0.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 0.9%
Black, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.07%

Notable people called Ren

Ren Zhengfei (born 1944)Chinese businessman
Chao Yuen Ren (1892–1982)Chinese-American linguist and educator
Cao Ren (168–223)Chinese Han dynasty general
Alexis Ren (born 1996)American social media personality, actress, entrepreneur and model
Ren Ziwei (born 1997)speed skater
Ren Bishi (1904–1950)Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
Ren Cancan (born 1986)Chinese boxer
Ren Qian (born 2001)Chinese diver

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

Surnames like Ren

Also a first name

Ren has been given to 3,634 American babies as a first name since 1915, peaking in 2025. 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.