Usher

At the 2020 census, 7,322 Americans bore the surname Usher — 4,697th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 40,800.

By the numbers

People: 7,322
Rank: 4,697th
How common: 1 in 40,800
Per 100,000: 2.5

Where the name comes from

Origin an occupational name

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 63.4%
Black, not Hispanic 27.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.4%
Hispanic or Latino 3.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Usher

Usher (born 1978)American R&B singer
Alberto Héber Usher (1918–1981)Uruguayan politician
John Palmer Usher (1816–1889)American politician

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

Also a first name

Usher has been given to 1,306 American babies as a first name since 1914, 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.