Roper

At the 2020 census, 19,255 Americans bore the surname Roper — 1,826th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 15,500.

By the numbers

People: 19,255
Rank: 1,826th
How common: 1 in 15,500
Per 100,000: 6.4

Where the name comes from

As an English surname, from the noun roper.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.5%
Black, not Hispanic 20.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Roper

Marion Roper (1910–1991)diver
Margaret Roper (1505–1544)English writer, translator;
Christine Roper (born 1990)Canadian rower
Don Roper (1922–2001)English footballer

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

Also a first name

Roper has been given to 655 American babies as a first name since 1992, 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.