Cooper
271,453 people in the United States were counted with the surname Cooper in the 2020 census, making it the 72nd most common in the country. That is about one person in 1,101.
By the numbers
- People
- 271,453
- Rank
- 72nd
- How common
- 1 in 1,101
- Per 100,000
- 90.8
Where the name comes from
Origin an occupational name
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Cooper described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Cooper
- Bradley Cooper (born 1975)American actor
- Gary Cooper (1901–1961)American actor
- James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)American writer
- Alice Cooper (born 1948)American singer
- Leon Cooper (1930–2024)American physicist
- Chris Cooper (born 1951)American actor
- Martin Cooper (born 1928)American engineer, father of mobile phone
- Dominic Cooper (born 1978)British actor
People named Cooper with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Cooper
Also a first name
Cooper has been given to 126,484 American babies as a first name since 1882, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.