Root

At the 2020 census, 19,501 Americans bore the surname Root — 1,801st out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 15,300.

By the numbers

People: 19,501
Rank: 1,801st
How common: 1 in 15,300
Per 100,000: 6.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Middle English

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 90.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.8%
Hispanic or Latino 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Black, not Hispanic 0.7%

Surnames like Root

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.