Greer

At the 2020 census, 55,088 Americans bore the surname Greer — 596th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 5,426.

By the numbers

People: 55,088
Rank: 596th
How common: 1 in 5,426
Per 100,000: 18.4

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Greer described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 70.2%
Black, not Hispanic 21.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.5%
Hispanic or Latino 3.3%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Greer

Germaine Greer (born 1939)Australian writer and public intellectual
Judy Greer (born 1975)American actress
Jane Greer (1924–2001)American actress
Hal Greer (1936–2018)American basketball player
Steven M. Greer (born 1955)American ufologist
Dabbs Greer (1917–2007)American actor (1917−2007)
Andrew Sean Greer (born 1970)American novelist and short story writer
Frank Greer (1879–1943)American rower

People named Greer with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Greer

Also a first name

Greer has been given to 3,818 American babies as a first name since 1912, 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.