Sam
At the 2020 census, 12,973 Americans bore the surname Sam — 2,711th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 23,000.
By the numbers
- People
- 12,973
- Rank
- 2,711th
- How common
- 1 in 23,000
- Per 100,000
- 4.3
Where the name comes from
Origin Cantonese
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Sam described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Sam
- Sidney Sam (born 1988)German association football player
- Sinan Şamil Sam (1974–2015)Turkish boxer
- Şevval Sam (born 1972)Turkish actress and singer
- Michael Sam (born 1990)American football player
- Sam Hou Fai (born 1962)Macau judge and politician, the 6th Chief Executive of Macau
- Tirésias Simon Sam (1835–1916)President of Haiti
- Eliza Sam (born 1984)Canadian actress
- Guy Van Sam (1935–2024)French footballer
People named Sam with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Sam
Also a first name
Sam has been given to 128,810 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1918. 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.