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

Hess, 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 Hess surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Hess in America

Hess is the 564th most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Hess surname appeared 59,486 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 20 people would have the surname Hess.

We can also compare 2010 data for Hess 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 Hess

The surname Hess is of German origin, derived from the Middle High German word "hesse," meaning "dweller on a heathland or barren area." The name first appeared in the 13th century in the region of Hesse, located in central Germany.

In its earliest form, the name was spelled as "Hesse" or "Hessen," referring to people from the area of Hesse. Over time, the spelling evolved to "Hess," reflecting the pronunciation changes in the German language.

One of the earliest recorded instances of the name can be found in the Codex Diplomaticus Anhaltinus, a collection of historical documents from the region of Anhalt, dated around 1350. The document mentions a person named "Johannes Hesse."

The name Hess is also found in the Berne Chronicle, a 15th-century illustrated manuscript chronicling the history of the city of Berne, Switzerland. It mentions a member of the Hess family who held a prominent position in the city's governance.

Notable individuals with the surname Hess include:

1. Rudolf Hess (1894-1987), a prominent Nazi official and Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party.
2. Hans Hess (1490-1549), a German painter and engraver known for his religious works during the Renaissance.
3. Germain Henri Hess (1802-1850), a Swiss-Russian chemist and physician, best known for his work on the conservation of energy and the formulation of Hess's law.
4. Walter Rudolf Hess (1881-1973), a Swiss physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for his discovery of the functional organization of the interbrain as a coordinator of the activities of the individual organs.
5. Moses Hess (1812-1875), a German philosopher and one of the founders of Labor Zionism, who played a significant role in the development of socialist theory and the early Zionist movement.

The name Hess has also been associated with various place names, such as Hessisch Oldendorf, a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and the Hessian region in central Germany, which was once a separate state within the Holy Roman Empire.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Hess

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

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 Hess 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 Hess 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 Hess was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

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

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