Shepard

Shepard is the 928th most common surname in the United States, shared by 36,770 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 8,129.

By the numbers

People: 36,770
Rank: 928th
How common: 1 in 8,129
Per 100,000: 12.3

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 74.4%
Black, not Hispanic 16.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.3%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.0%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Shepard

Alan Shepard (1923–1998)American astronaut, first American in space, lunar explorer
Sam Shepard (1943–2017)American playwright and actor
Matthew Shepard (1976–1998)American LGBT student and murder victim
Dax Shepard (born 1975)American podcaster and actor
Ernest Howard Shepard (1879–1976)British artist
Sara Shepard (born 1977)American author
Lucius Shepard (1943–2014)American writer
Vonda Shepard (born 1963)American singer

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

Surnames like Shepard

Also a first name

Shepard has been given to 3,719 American babies as a first name since 1912, peaking in 2025. 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.