Surname statistics for Foster

There are approximately 85,712 people named Foster in the UK. That makes it the 83rd most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 1,357 are named Foster.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)8571283N/A1357
United Kingdom (1881 census)40041750.1341337
Change since 1881+45671-8+0.002+20
Other Countries
United States22104087N/A819
Australia10167110N/A622

Politics

People with the surname Foster 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 Foster are:

  1. Conservative (12)
  2. Labour (10)
  3. Liberal Democrat (4)
  4. Independent Alliance (1)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

David Foster
John Foster
Stephen Foster
Paul Foster
Mark Foster
Michael Foster
Andrew Foster
Peter Foster
Richard Foster
Robert Foster
James Foster
Simon Foster
Ian Foster
Alan Foster
Anthony Foster
Neil Foster
Brian Foster
Christopher Foster
Graham Foster
Martin Foster

Top female forenames

Susan Foster
Margaret Foster
Julie Foster
Karen Foster
Janet Foster
Elizabeth Foster
Christine Foster
Jacqueline Foster
Sarah Foster
Helen Foster
Linda Foster
Nicola Foster
Caroline Foster
Lisa Foster
Emma Foster
Jane Foster
Gillian Foster
Deborah Foster
Patricia Foster
Claire Foster

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.