Find out how popular the last name Carignan is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Carignan.

Carignan, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Carignan surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Carignan in America

Carignan is the 16652nd most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Carignan surname appeared 1,720 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 1 people would have the surname Carignan.

We can also compare 2010 data for Carignan to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

The history of the last name Carignan

The surname Carignan has its origins in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. It derives from the place name Carignano, a town located about 15 miles south of Turin. Carignano itself is thought to come from the Late Latin word "carinianum," meaning "estate of Carinius," after a local Gallo-Roman landowner from antiquity.

The earliest recorded instances of the Carignan surname date back to the 12th century. One notable early bearer was Giacomo Carignan, a nobleman and military leader from Piedmont who fought in the wars between the Holy Roman Empire and the Italian city-states in the mid-1200s. Another was Pietro Carignan, a judge and legal scholar born around 1310 in Carignano.

During the Renaissance era, the Carignan name spread beyond Piedmont as members of the family migrated to other parts of Italy and Europe. Giovanni Battista Carignan (1556-1633) was a Baroque painter and architect from Parma. Father Matthieu Carignan (1584-1669) was a Jesuit missionary who worked among the Huron people in early French Canada.

In France, the name took the spelling Carignan and became associated with the House of Savoy, the ruling dynasty of Piedmont. Prince Thomas of Savoy (1596-1656), commonly known as the Prince of Carignan, was a prominent military leader who fought for France and Spain during the Thirty Years' War. His descendants formed the Carignan branch of the House of Savoy.

The Carignans also produced a number of notable churchmen, such as Cardinal Maurizio Carignan (1617-1685), archbishop of Turin, and Michel Le Tellier de Carignan (1662-1728), bishop of Auxerre in France. In the 19th century, Eugène Carignan (1805-1865) was a French general who served in the Crimean War.

Through migration and intermarriage, the Carignan surname dispersed widely across Western Europe over the centuries. It can be found among families of Italian, French, Spanish, and other European ancestries to this day.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Carignan

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Carignan.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

1. White only
2. Black only
3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
5. Hispanic
6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Carignan was:

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Carignan has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Carignan was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Carignan, please contact us.

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