The history of your name

The GOODMAN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 71,482 409 0.026 265
United States (1880 census) 12,904 458 0.026 258
Change since 1880 +58578 +49 0 +7
Other Countries
Australia 1,959 830 0.012 120
United Kingdom 10,310 579 0.022 224
Top States for GOODMAN by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
California 6,196 501 0.018 183
Florida 5,116 330 0.032 320
New York 4,855 303 0.026 256
Texas 4,237 589 0.020 203
North Carolina 3,426 310 0.043 426
Top States for GOODMAN by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Tennessee 2,825 284 0.050 497
Kentucky 1,854 310 0.046 459
North Carolina 3,426 310 0.043 426
Washington DC 233 245 0.041 407
Virginia 2,645 307 0.037 374

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called GOODMAN live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called GOODMAN represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called GOODMAN in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a GOODMAN by picking someone at random in Tennessee than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of GOODMAN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Occupational Name

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the GOODMAN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the GOODMAN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of GOODMAN in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Mixed Race 894 1.25
Native American/Alaskan 693 0.97
Asian/Pacific 307 0.43
White (Caucasian) 57,657 80.66
Black/African American 10,808 15.12
White (Hispanic) 1,129 1.58

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the GOODMAN surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of GOODMAN in historical publications

GOODMAN. 1. Gudmund, a very common Teutonic and A-Sax. baitismal name. 2. A common form of address in old times. Also a complimentaiy sobriquet. Thus a great-grandson of the famous William Bclward was called Goodman. Eng. Surn. ii. 49.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to GOODMAN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GOODMAN.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for GOODMAN

The following words are slight variants of GOODMAN that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.