Terry

83,406 people in the United States were counted with the surname Terry in the 2020 census, making it the 372nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 3,584.

By the numbers

People: 83,406
Rank: 372nd
How common: 1 in 3,584
Per 100,000: 27.9

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 63.4%
Black, not Hispanic 26.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Terry

John Terry (born 1980)English association football player
Ellen Terry (1847–1928)English actress
Jason Terry (born 1977)American basketball player
Clark Terry (1920–2015)American swing and bebop trumpeter
John Terry (born 1950)American actor
Twanisha Terry (born 1999)American sprinter
Simon Terry (1974–2021)British archer
Alice Terry (1899–1987)American actress

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

Surnames like Terry

Also a first name

Terry has been given to 521,478 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1957. 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.