Nelson
At the 2020 census, 410,801 Americans bore the surname Nelson — 44th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 728.
By the numbers
- People
- 410,801
- Rank
- 44th
- How common
- 1 in 728
- Per 100,000
- 137.4
Where the name comes from
Origin a patronymic
In the United States, also an Anglicisation of gmq (Scandinavian) surnames such as Nilsen, Nielsen, and Nilsson, equivalent to "son of Nicholas".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Who bears the name
How people with the surname Nelson described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:
Notable people called Nelson
- Willie Nelson (born 1933)American country musician
- Ricky Nelson (1940–1985)American musician and actor
- Bill Nelson (born 1942)American politician and attorney
- Tim Blake Nelson (born 1964)American actor, director and writer
- Craig T. Nelson (born 1944)American actor and comedian
- Reiss Nelson (born 1999)English footballer
- Ted Nelson (born 1937)American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist
- Barry Nelson (1917–2007)American actor
People named Nelson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Surnames like Nelson
Also a first name
Nelson has been given to 80,140 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 1959. 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.