Shaw

Shaw is the 169th most common surname in the United States, shared by 155,184 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 1,926.

By the numbers

People: 155,184
Rank: 169th
How common: 1 in 1,926
Per 100,000: 51.9

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.4%
Black, not Hispanic 20.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist
Luke Shaw (born 1995)English association football player
Sandie Shaw (born 1947)English pop singer
Fiona Shaw (born 1958)Irish actress
Robert Shaw (1927–1978)British actor and writer
Irwin Shaw (1913–1984)American writer
George Shaw (1751–1813)English botanist and zoologist
Artie Shaw (1910–2004)American clarinetist, composer, and bandleader

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

Surnames like Shaw

Also a first name

Shaw has been given to 1,398 American babies as a first name since 1914, peaking in 2020. 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.