The MAIN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	12,631	2629	0.005	47
United States (1880 census)	3,324	1845	0.007	66
Change since 1880	+9307	-784	-0.002	-19
Other Countries
Australia	1,068	1550	0.007	65
United Kingdom	6,045	1038	0.013	132

Top States for MAIN by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
California	1,171	2725	0.003	35
Michigan	824	1346	0.008	83
Florida	689	3025	0.004	43
Pennsylvania	668	2306	0.005	54
Washington	634	1159	0.011	108
Top States for MAIN by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Maine	204	1243	0.016	160
Connecticut	414	1008	0.012	122
Iowa	335	1017	0.011	114
Washington	634	1159	0.011	108
Vermont	61	1794	0.010	100

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

Classification and Origin of MAIN

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

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

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Hispanic)	253	2
Native American/Alaskan	168	1.33
Mixed Race	158	1.25
Asian/Pacific	145	1.15
Black/African American	56	0.44
White (Caucasian)	11,852	93.83

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

Similar names to MAIN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as MAIN.

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.