# Balfour (surname)

Source: https://namelineage.com/surname/balfour/  
Publisher: Name Lineage. Counts from the US Census Bureau; origin and etymology from Wiktionary; bearers from Wikidata. Data updated 2026-11-11.

A habitational surname from Scottish Gaelic.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Origin | Scottish Gaelic |
| Type | place, taken from where an ancestor lived or came from |
| People in the US (2010 Census) | 2,268 |
| US rank (2010) | 13,435 of 162,253 |
| How often | about 1 in every 136,131 people |
| Change since 2000 | +8.0% (2,100 in 2000) |
| Pronunciation | not recorded |
| Variant spellings | none recorded |

## Etymology

From Scottish Gaelic baile (“village, town”) + pùir, genitive form of pór (“pasture, grass”).

## Who carries it

Share of people named Balfour in the 2010 US Census by the Census's own race and ethnicity groups. The Census suppresses a share when the count behind it is small.

| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| White (not Hispanic) | 64% |
| Black (not Hispanic) | 29% |
| Hispanic or Latino (any race) | 4.1% |
| Asian and Pacific Islander | 0.7% |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 0.2% |
| Two or more races | 1.9% |

## Where

Wikidata records people named Balfour in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

## People named Balfour

- Eric Balfour, American actor and singer
- John Hutton Balfour, British botanist (1808-1884)
- Francis Maitland Balfour, British biologist (1851–1882)
- Isaac Bayley Balfour, British botanist and academic (1853-1922)
- Betty Balfour, British actress (1903-1977)
- Grant Balfour, Australian baseball player
- Frances Balfour, British aristocrat and suffragist (1858-1931)

## Similar surnames

Belford, Bluford, Bilbrey, Bolivar, Belfiore.

## How to read these numbers

A Census count is people alive and counted in 2010, not births, and names occurring fewer than 100 times are not published at all. Ethnicity shares are the Census's own categories.