Whitley

Whitley is the 1,366th most common surname in the United States, shared by 25,367 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 11,800.

By the numbers

People: 25,367
Rank: 1,366th
How common: 1 in 11,800
Per 100,000: 8.5

Where the name comes from

Origin Old English

From Old English hwīt (“white”) + lēah (“woodland clearing, glade”). Equivalent.

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 69.4%
Black, not Hispanic 22.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.0%
Hispanic or Latino 3.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.4%

Notable people called Whitley

Kym Whitley (born 1961)American actress and comedian
Keith Whitley (1954–1989)American country singer

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

Surnames like Whitley

Also a first name

Whitley has been given to 8,991 American babies as a first name since 1914, peaking in 1988. 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.