Sullivan

At the 2020 census, 212,701 Americans bore the surname Sullivan — 107th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 1,405.

By the numbers

People: 212,701
Rank: 107th
How common: 1 in 1,405
Per 100,000: 71.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

. From Irish Ó Súilleabháin.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 85.1%
Black, not Hispanic 6.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Sullivan

Louis Sullivan (1856–1924)American architect
Anne Sullivan (1866–1936)American teacher
Ed Sullivan (1901–1974)American television host
Kathryn D. Sullivan (born 1951)American astronaut
Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900)English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
Dennis Sullivan (born 1941)American mathematician
Jake Sullivan (born 1976)American attorney and politician
Dan Sullivan (born 1964)United States Senator from Alaska

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

Surnames like Sullivan

Also a first name

Sullivan has been given to 17,077 American babies as a first name since 1884, 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.