Olive

Olive is the 5,932nd most common surname in the United States, shared by 5,595 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 53,400.

By the numbers

People: 5,595
Rank: 5,932nd
How common: 1 in 53,400
Per 100,000: 1.9

Where the name comes from

Medieval form of the saint's name Oliva "olive"; revived in the 19th century when flower and plant names became fashionable. The surname is topographical, often representing an Anglicization of continental European surnames such as.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 68.8%
Black, not Hispanic 16.0%
Hispanic or Latino 6.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 5.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 3.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.6%

Notable people called Olive

Joan Olivé (born 1984)Spanish motorcycle racer
David Olive (1937–2012)British physicist

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

Surnames like Olive

Also a first name

Olive has been given to 67,320 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2022. 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.