Surname statistics for Obrien

There are approximately 16,406 people named Obrien in the UK. That makes it the 613rd most common surname overall. Out of every million people in the UK, approximately 260 are named Obrien.

Frequency Comparisons
TotalRankFrequency %Per million people
Great Britain
United Kingdom (current)16406613N/A260
United Kingdom (1881 census)80146810.00327
Change since 1881+15605+4068+0.023+233
Other Countries
United States115385234N/A428
Australia4743368N/A29

Politics

People with the surname Obrien are more 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 Obrien are:

  1. Conservative (12)
  2. Labour (2)
  3. Independent (1)
  4. SNP (1)
More stats for the politics nerds!

Top male forenames

John Obrien
Michael Obrien
Paul Obrien
Peter Obrien
Patrick Obrien
Mark Obrien
James Obrien
David Obrien
Anthony Obrien
Kevin Obrien
Stephen Obrien
Thomas Obrien
Terence Obrien
William Obrien
Richard Obrien
Christopher Obrien
Daniel Obrien
Martin Obrien
Timothy Obrien
Philip Obrien

Top female forenames

Susan Obrien
Margaret Obrien
Helen Obrien
Patricia Obrien
Jacqueline Obrien
Mary Obrien
Sarah Obrien
Alison Obrien
Sally Obrien
Carol Obrien
Linda Obrien
Maureen Obrien
Maria Obrien
Lisa Obrien
Pamela Obrien
Rachel Obrien
Elizabeth Obrien
Anne Obrien
Ann Obrien
Karen Obrien

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.