Rome

At the 2020 census, 4,980 Americans bore the surname Rome — 6,545th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 60,000.

By the numbers

People: 4,980
Rank: 6,545th
How common: 1 in 60,000
Per 100,000: 1.7

Where the name comes from

From Middle English Rome, from Old English Rōm, from Proto-West Germanic *Rūmu, from Proto-Germanic *Rūmō and influenced by Latin Rōma (“Rome, Constantinople”), from Classical Latin Rōma (“Rome”). In Roman mythology, the name was said to derive from Romulus, one of the founders of the city and its first king.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 71.7%
Black, not Hispanic 18.5%
Hispanic or Latino 4.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Rome

Giles of Rome (1243–1316)Roman Catholic archbishop
Sydne Rome (born 1946)American-Italian film actress

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

Surnames like Rome

Also a first name

Rome has been given to 6,075 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 2024. 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.