The PATERSON surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	6,809	4760	0.003	25
United States (1880 census)	3,389	1808	0.007	68
Change since 1880	+3420	-2952	-0.004	-43
Other Countries
Australia	5,721	237	0.035	350
United Kingdom	23,884	219	0.052	520

Top States for PATERSON by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
California	827	3831	0.002	24
Florida	577	3770	0.004	36
New York	474	4323	0.002	25
Texas	377	5641	0.002	18
New Jersey	363	2764	0.004	43
Top States for PATERSON by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Vermont	54	2061	0.009	89
Rhode Island	68	2524	0.006	65
New Hampshire	70	2804	0.006	57
Oregon	180	2564	0.005	53
Maine	62	3329	0.005	49

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

Classification and Origin of PATERSON

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: Scotland

Language of origin: Gaelic

Ethnic origin: Celtic

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

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

Classification	Total	Percent
Black/African American	775	11.38
White (Hispanic)	123	1.81
Mixed Race	84	1.23
Asian/Pacific	46	0.68
Native American/Alaskan	30	0.44
White (Caucasian)	5,751	84.46

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

Similar names to PATERSON

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PATERSON.

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.