Surname statistics for Nelson

There are approximately 39,765 people named Nelson in the UK. That makes it the 217th most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 629 are named Nelson.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)39765217N/A629
United Kingdom (1881 census)145062800.048484
Change since 1881+25259+63+0.015+145
Other Countries
United States41223640N/A1528
Australia8208145N/A502

Politics

People with the surname Nelson 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 Labour.

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

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

Top male forenames

David Nelson
John Nelson
Paul Nelson
Michael Nelson
Robert Nelson
Peter Nelson
Andrew Nelson
Mark Nelson
James Nelson
Richard Nelson
William Nelson
Stephen Nelson
Christopher Nelson
Anthony Nelson
Ian Nelson
Gary Nelson
Brian Nelson
Colin Nelson
Philip Nelson
Steven Nelson

Top female forenames

Susan Nelson
Sarah Nelson
Margaret Nelson
Elizabeth Nelson
Jane Nelson
Patricia Nelson
Linda Nelson
Catherine Nelson
Christine Nelson
Julie Nelson
Helen Nelson
Mary Nelson
Sharon Nelson
Jacqueline Nelson
Jennifer Nelson
Karen Nelson
Gillian Nelson
Michelle Nelson
Carol Nelson
Angela Nelson

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.