Whitney
33,509 people in the United States were counted with the surname Whitney in the 2020 census, making it the 1,029th most common in the country. That is about one person in 8,920.
By the numbers
- People
- 33,509
- Rank
- 1,029th
- How common
- 1 in 8,920
- Per 100,000
- 11.2
Where the name comes from
Origin Middle English
From Old English hwītan, dative of hwīt (“white”) + īeġ (“island”), "white island".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Whitney described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Whitney
- Eli Whitney (1765–1825)American inventor
- Grace Lee Whitney (1930–2015)American actress and entertainer
- Hassler Whitney (1907–1989)American mathematician
- William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894)American orientalist, linguist and lexicographer
- Mary Watson Whitney (1847–1921)American astronomer
- Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942)American sculptor
- Phyllis A. Whitney (1903–2008)American writer
- Ryan Whitney (born 1983)American ice hockey player
People named Whitney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Whitney
Also a first name
Whitney has been given to 103,657 American babies as a first name since 1884, peaking in 1986. 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.