# Waits (surname)

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

An English surname originating as an occupation, a variant of Waite.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Origin | not recorded |
| Type | occupational, named after the work an ancestor did |
| People in the US (2010 Census) | 5,661 |
| US rank (2010) | 6,059 of 162,253 |
| How often | about 1 in every 54,539 people |
| Change since 2000 | +0.3% (5,644 in 2000) |
| Pronunciation | not recorded |
| Variant spellings | none recorded |

## Who carries it

Share of people named Waits 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) | 84% |
| Black (not Hispanic) | 12% |
| Hispanic or Latino (any race) | 1.9% |
| Asian and Pacific Islander | 0.2% |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 0.7% |
| Two or more races | 1.5% |

## Where

Wikidata records people named Waits in the United States.

## People named Waits

- Tom Waits, American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1949)

## Similar surnames

Watts, Waites, Whitis, Woods, Whitehouse, Woodhouse, Weitz, Wedge, Wittig, Witek.

## 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.