Surname Generator: 1,997 US Last Names From the 2020 Census

How this list was compiled: Every name, rank, count and rate is from the US Census Bureau's file of last names reported 100 or more times in the 2020 Census, https://www2.census.gov/topics/genealogy/2020surnames/Names2020_LastNames_RaceHispanic.xlsx, linked from https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2020_names.html and fetched on 2026-09-19 (156,621 names). 2010 ranks and counts are from the bureau's file for the 2010 Census, Names_2010Census.csv inside https://www2.census.gov/topics/genealogy/2010surnames/names.zip, linked from https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2010_surnames.html. census.gov rejected a scripted request for that zip on 2026-09-19, so it was read that day from the Internet Archive's copy of the official file, captured 2026-09-09: https://web.archive.org/web/20260909180332/https://www2.census.gov/topics/genealogy/2010surnames/names.zip. This list is ranks 1 to 2,000 of the 2020 file, from Smith (2,369,644 people) to Montero (17,639 people). Names with the same count share a rank in the file, which happens 46 times here. Counts are of people whose last name was recorded: the bureau's brief C2020BR-14 (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/2020/c2020br-14.pdf) says last names were recorded for 299 million people, 90.2 percent of the population counted, so the rate is per 100,000 people with a recorded name. Left out: DOE (rank 78) and PERSON (rank 463), whose counts the brief warns are inflated by placeholder entries, and, as our own call, NA (rank 1,685 with 20,876 entries), which is absent from the 2010 file of names reported 100 or more times and reads as N/A once the bureau strips punctuation. That leaves 1,997 names: 99 in ranks 1 to 100 (Doe is the gap), 150 in ranks 101 to 250, 249 in ranks 251 to 500, 500 in ranks 501 to 1,000 and 999 in ranks 1,001 to 2,000. 'Up 50 places or more since 2010' (206 names) and 'New to the top 1,000 in 2020' (27 names) compare the rank columns of the two files. Only the rank, count and rate columns are used; the race and Hispanic-origin columns are not used anywhere on the page. The bureau stores names in capitals with spaces and punctuation removed and with no accents. We restored the usual written form for 79 names where one form is clearly the common one (60 that start with Mc, 9 that start with O', and particle names such as De La Cruz, Da Silva, DeWitt and LeBlanc); each item keeps the bureau's spelling in x.census. Everything else is printed with a single capital and without accents, so families who write DuBois or Peña will see Dubois and Pena. No meanings or origins are given, because the files carry none. Licence: Public domain: both files are works of the US federal government, which copyright does not cover (17 U.S.C. 105, https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#105, checked 2026-09-19). The restored written forms and the grouping are our own work.