The history of your name

The GERVAIS surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 4,935 6350 0.002 18
United States (1880 census) 237 17026 0 5
Change since 1880 +4698 +10676 +N/A +13
Other Countries
Australia 6 134073 0 0
United Kingdom 93 24331 0 2
Top States for GERVAIS by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Massachusetts 473 1749 0.007 74
California 398 6403 0.001 12
Maine 363 634 0.028 285
Florida 349 5217 0.002 22
Connecticut 337 1141 0.010 99
Top States for GERVAIS by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Maine 363 634 0.028 285
Vermont 132 685 0.022 217
Rhode Island 188 671 0.018 179
Delaware 87 1472 0.011 111
Connecticut 337 1141 0.010 99

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

Classification and Origin of GERVAIS

Region of origin: Europe

Country of origin: France

Language of origin: French

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the GERVAIS 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.

Ethnic distribution of GERVAIS in the USA

Classification Total Percent
Black/African American 226 4.58
Mixed Race 104 2.11
White (Hispanic) 76 1.54
Native American/Alaskan 63 1.28
Asian/Pacific 23 0.47
White (Caucasian) 4,443 90.03

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

Meaning of GERVAIS in historical publications

GERVAIS. The French form of the personal name Gervasius, which we have corrupted to Jarvis. The family of Gervais of Cecil, CO. Tyrone, descend from Jean G. of Tournon in Guienne, whose two sons, at the Rev. of the Edict of Nantes, fled into England.

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 GERVAIS

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as GERVAIS.

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 GERVAIS

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