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The surname Bowley

An English place surname, carried by 1,859 people in the United States.

2 syllables Soundex B400

Bowley: #15,692 of 162,253 surnames in the 2010 US Census #1Smith#160,975Doriott#10Martinez#100Jimenez#1,000Archer Bowley #15,692, 1,859 people Bowley: #15,692 of 162,253 surnames in the 2010 US Census #1Smith#160,975Doriott#100Jimenez Bowley #15,692, 1,859 people
Every surname held by 100 or more people in the 2010 US Census, most common on the left (162,253 in all). Bowley is more common than 90.3% of them.

Origin

English origin

From Old English boga (“bow; riverbend”) + lēah (“woodland clearing, glade”). Equivalent to bow + -ley (“lea”).

Bowley is a place surname: taken from where an ancestor lived or came from.

One of 1,446 English surnames on this site.

Origin from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

How common it is

2010 US Census

There were 1,859 people named Bowley in the United States in 2010, about 1 in every 166,082 Americans. That is up 1.0% since 2000, when the Census counted 1,841.

#15,692
rank among US surnames
1,859
people in 2010
0.6
per 100,000 Americans
+1%
change since 2000 (was #14,792)
RankSurnamePeople1 in
#15,687Cosenza1,860165,992
#15,692Milby1,859166,082
#15,700Vandenbosch1,858166,171

Who is named Bowley

Race and Hispanic origin as people reported it in the 2010 Census

86% of people named Bowley identified as white (not Hispanic), 4.6% as Black (not Hispanic) and 4.6% as Hispanic or Latino (any race).

  • White (not Hispanic) 86%
  • Black (not Hispanic) 4.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino (any race) 4.6%
  • Two or more races 2.9%
  • Asian and Pacific Islander 1.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native 0.5%

Compare: most common surnames among white Americans.

Spellings and sound-alikes

Useful when a record has your ancestor under another spelling

Surnames that sound like Bowley

Bowley has the Soundex code B400, the code US census indexes have used since the 1930s. Every surname with code B400.

Other English surnames

Questions

Where does the surname Bowley come from?
From Old English boga (“bow; riverbend”) + lēah (“woodland clearing, glade”). Equivalent to bow + -ley (“lea”).
How common is the surname Bowley?
1,859 people in the United States had the surname Bowley in the 2010 Census, about 1 in every 166,082 Americans. It ranked 15,692nd of 162,253 surnames.
What ethnicity is the surname Bowley?
In the 2010 Census, 86% of people named Bowley identified as white (not Hispanic), and 4.6% as Black (not Hispanic).
What type of surname is Bowley?
Bowley is a place surname, taken from where an ancestor lived or came from.
Is the surname Bowley getting more or less common?
More common. 1,841 people carried it in the 2000 Census and 1,859 in 2010, up 1.0%.