The JOHNSTON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	128,935	207	0.048	478
United States (1880 census)	38,775	120	0.078	776
Change since 1880	+90160	-87	-0.03	-298
Other Countries
Australia	16,155	63	0.099	988
United Kingdom	40,390	110	0.088	879

Top States for JOHNSTON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
California	10,753	255	0.032	317
Texas	9,508	236	0.046	456
Florida	7,503	210	0.047	469
Pennsylvania	6,751	115	0.055	550
Ohio	5,486	186	0.048	483
Top States for JOHNSTON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Idaho	1,138	84	0.088	879
Wyoming	423	64	0.086	857
Maine	1,084	164	0.085	850
Montana	766	71	0.085	849
Oregon	2,775	84	0.081	811

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

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

Classification and Origin of JOHNSTON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: Location or Geographical Feature

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the JOHNSTON 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 JOHNSTON 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 JOHNSTON in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
Native American/Alaskan	954	0.74
Asian/Pacific	670	0.52
White (Caucasian)	120,077	93.13
Black/African American	3,159	2.45
White (Hispanic)	2,243	1.74
Mixed Race	1,818	1.41

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

Similar names to JOHNSTON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as JOHNSTON.

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.