Smoot

8,782 people in the United States were counted with the surname Smoot in the 2020 census, making it the 3,924th most common in the country. That is about one person in 34,000.

By the numbers

People: 8,782
Rank: 3,924th
How common: 1 in 34,000
Per 100,000: 2.9

Where the name comes from

Likely from the Dutch smout, someone who sold or worked with animal fat.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 63.2%
Black, not Hispanic 27.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.3%
Hispanic or Latino 2.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Smoot

George F. Smoot (1945–2025)American astrophysicist and cosmologist
Reed Owen Smoot (1862–1941)United States Senator and LDS Apostle

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

Surnames like Smoot

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.