Self

At the 2020 census, 21,783 Americans bore the surname Self — 1,604th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 13,700.

By the numbers

People: 21,783
Rank: 1,604th
How common: 1 in 13,700
Per 100,000: 7.3

Where the name comes from

From self. A surname taken up by freed slaves, who have become of themselves, they being self-owned.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 84.4%
Black, not Hispanic 5.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Self

Will Self (born 1961)English writer and journalist

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

Surnames like Self

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.