Surname statistics for Holmes

There are approximately 75,059 people named Holmes in the UK. That makes it the 95th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 1,188 are named Holmes.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)7505995N/A1188
United Kingdom (1881 census)36469850.1221218
Change since 1881+38590-10-0.003-30
Other Countries
United States150166161N/A557
Australia8992129N/A550

Politics

People with the surname Holmes are slightly less likely to be politicians than the average member of the population. When they do become politicians, they are most likely to be elected as Conservative.

As of the most recent set of elections, the political parties represented by politicians called Holmes are:

  1. Conservative (7)
  2. Labour (6)
  3. Independent (3)
  4. Liberal Democrat (2)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

David Holmes
John Holmes
Michael Holmes
Andrew Holmes
Paul Holmes
Peter Holmes
Robert Holmes
Richard Holmes
Mark Holmes
Stephen Holmes
Christopher Holmes
Ian Holmes
Steven Holmes
Anthony Holmes
Nicholas Holmes
Simon Holmes
James Holmes
William Holmes
Alan Holmes
Philip Holmes

Top female forenames

Susan Holmes
Patricia Holmes
Sarah Holmes
Helen Holmes
Margaret Holmes
Christine Holmes
Linda Holmes
Julie Holmes
Karen Holmes
Jane Holmes
Elizabeth Holmes
Deborah Holmes
Carol Holmes
Jennifer Holmes
Nicola Holmes
Alison Holmes
Anne Holmes
Lisa Holmes
Sandra Holmes
Michelle Holmes

Notes

  • Total is the total number of people with that surname.
  • Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
  • Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
  • Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

All of these are approximate figures, and the current figures especially so. The 1881 census figures are correct for what was recorded on the census, but we don't really know how accurate it was. At least, though the 1881 figures won't change, as it's a snapshot of a point in time. The current figures, by contrast, are variable according to births, deaths, migration and marriages, so the values shown here are only a best approximation to whatever was the case when the underlying data was collated and will not be the same as whatever the values are right now.

'N/A' indicates that we don't have data for this name in that country or time (usually because it's quite uncommon there and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one there with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the UK as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.