Ridley

At the 2020 census, 11,357 Americans bore the surname Ridley — 3,089th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 26,300.

By the numbers

People: 11,357
Rank: 3,089th
How common: 1 in 26,300
Per 100,000: 3.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

Place names in England, Old English hrēad (“reeds”) or rydde (“cleared land”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”). Thus, equivalent to reed.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 49.2%
Black, not Hispanic 39.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Ridley

Daisy Ridley (born 1992)English actress
Matt Ridley (born 1958)British author and journalist
Yvonne Ridley (born 1958)British journalist, war correspondent and political activist
Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855–1956)English botanist and geologist
Nicholas Ridley (1500–1555)Bishop of London; Anglican Saint
John Ridley (born 1964)American writer and director
Arnold Ridley (1896–1984)English playwright and actor
Philip Ridley (born 1964)British artist and author

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

Surnames like Ridley

Also a first name

Ridley has been given to 2,892 American babies as a first name since 1915, peaking in 2021. 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.