Ripley

Ripley is the 3,862nd most common surname in the United States, shared by 8,953 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 33,400.

By the numbers

People: 8,953
Rank: 3,862nd
How common: 1 in 33,400
Per 100,000: 3.0

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From the Old English folk name for the Anglian tribe, *Hrype + Old English lēah (“woodland clearing”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 87.2%
Hispanic or Latino 4.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Black, not Hispanic 2.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Ripley

Rhea Ripley (born 1996)Australian professional wrestler
Robert Ripley (1890–1949)American cartoonist
Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832)British missionary
Alexandra Ripley (1934–2004)American writer
Sidney Dillon Ripley (1913–2001)American ornithologist and 8th Secretary of the Smithsonian
Richard Ripley (1901–1996)British sprinter
Stuart Ripley (born 1967)association football player from England
William Zebina Ripley (1867–1941)American academic

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

Surnames like Ripley

Rippy

Also a first name

Ripley has been given to 3,590 American babies as a first name since 1918, 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.