Hale

83,103 people in the United States were counted with the surname Hale in the 2020 census, making it the 375th most common in the country. That is about one person in 3,597.

By the numbers

People: 83,103
Rank: 375th
How common: 1 in 3,597
Per 100,000: 27.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

As an English surname, Old English dative form of halh (“hollow, nook”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 78.9%
Black, not Hispanic 11.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.6%
Hispanic or Latino 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 1.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Hale

Lucy Hale (born 1989)American actress and singer
George Ellery Hale (1868–1938)American astronomer
Tony Hale (born 1970)American actor
Barbara Hale (1922–2017)American actress
Jennifer Hale (born 1972)Canadian voice actress
Nathan Hale (1755–1776)soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War
Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909)American author, historian and Unitarian minister
Georgia Hale (1900–1985)American silent film actress

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

Surnames like Hale

Also a first name

Hale has been given to 1,296 American babies as a first name since 1892, peaking in 1917. 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.