Ross

224,952 people in the United States were counted with the surname Ross in the 2020 census, making it the 99th most common in the country. That is about one person in 1,329.

By the numbers

People: 224,952
Rank: 99th
How common: 1 in 1,329
Per 100,000: 75.3

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic

As a Scottish surname, from several places such as Roose in Cumbria or Roos in Yorkshire, both from Scottish Gaelic ros (“promontory”) or a cel-bry parallel of its source such as Welsh rhos. There were also several Norman families in Scotland who took their name from Rots in Calvados. Compare Rose, Rhodes.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 66.0%
Black, not Hispanic 24.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.8%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%

Notable people called Ross

Ronald Ross (1857–1932)British doctor, Nobel laureate, writer, and artist
Diana Ross (born 1944)American singer and actress
James Clark Ross (1800–1862)British explorer and naval officer
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004)Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies
Bob Ross (1942–1995)American painter, art instructor, television host, and Air Force master sergeant
Katharine Ross (born 1940)American actress
Rick Ross (born 1976)American rapper and record executive
Sanya Richards-Ross (born 1985)Jamaican-American sprinter

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

Surnames like Ross

Also a first name

Ross has been given to 82,293 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1985. 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.