Wolf

At the 2020 census, 69,917 Americans bore the surname Wolf — 467th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 4,275.

By the numbers

People: 69,917
Rank: 467th
How common: 1 in 4,275
Per 100,000: 23.4

Where the name comes from

Origin a given name

From Middle English and German short forms of given names containing the Germanic element "wolf".

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 90.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 3.1%
Black, not Hispanic 1.2%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%

Notable people called Wolf

Christa Wolf (1929–2011)German novelist and essayist
Max Wolf (1863–1932)German astrophotography pioneer
Hugo Wolf (1860–1903)Austrian composer
Naomi Wolf (born 1962)American feminist and journalist
Markus Wolf (1923–2006)Head of the East German foreign intelligence service during the Cold War
Howlin' Wolf (1910–1976)American blues musician
Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824)German philologist
Marius Wolf (born 1995)German footballer

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

Surnames like Wolf

Also a first name

Wolf has been given to 1,658 American babies as a first name since 1912, peaking in 2021. 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.