Stanford

Stanford is the 1,726th most common surname in the United States, shared by 20,320 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 14,700.

By the numbers

People: 20,320
Rank: 1,726th
How common: 1 in 14,700
Per 100,000: 6.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

Various placenames from Old English stān (“stone”) + ford (“ford”).

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 68.6%
Black, not Hispanic 22.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Stanford

Leland Stanford (1824–1893)American politician and railroad tycoon
Aaron Stanford (born 1976)American actor
Jason Gray-Stanford (born 1970)Canadian film actor
Allen Stanford (born 1950)Chairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison

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

Surnames like Stanford

Also a first name

Stanford has been given to 7,727 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1954. 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.