Rivers

37,733 people in the United States were counted with the surname Rivers in the 2020 census, making it the 912th most common in the country. That is about one person in 7,921.

By the numbers

People: 37,733
Rank: 912th
How common: 1 in 7,921
Per 100,000: 12.6

Who bears the name

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

Black, not Hispanic 48.1%
White, not Hispanic 38.7%
Hispanic or Latino 5.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Rivers

Joan Rivers (1933–2014)American comedian, actress, and television host
Sam Rivers (1977–2025)American bassist
Johnny Rivers (born 1942)American rock musician
Austin Rivers (born 1992)American basketball player
Philip Rivers (born 1981)American football player
Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827–1900)English army officer, ethnologist and archaeologist
Larry Rivers (1923–2002)American artist
William Halse Rivers Rivers (1864–1922)English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist

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

Surnames like Rivers

Also a first name

Rivers has been given to 2,637 American babies as a first name since 1910, peaking in 2020. 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.