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

Wallace, 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 Wallace surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Wallace in America

Wallace is the 123rd most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Wallace surname appeared 197,276 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 67 people would have the surname Wallace.

We can also compare 2010 data for Wallace 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 Wallace

The surname Wallace is of Scottish origin, derived from the Anglo-Norman French waleis, which means "foreigner" or "stranger". This name was initially given to someone who came from Wales or had some connection to the Welsh people. The earliest recorded instances of the name can be traced back to the 12th century in Scotland.

The Wallace surname is closely associated with Sir William Wallace, the famous Scottish knight and landowner who played a significant role in the Wars of Scottish Independence against the English in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. He was born around 1270 in Elderslie, Renfrewshire, and became a prominent figure in the resistance against King Edward I of England's attempts to subjugate Scotland.

One of the earliest known references to the Wallace surname can be found in the Ragman Rolls of 1296, which recorded the names of Scottish landowners and nobles who swore fealty to Edward I. Among them was Richerde Walays, a landowner from Riccarton, Ayrshire.

In the 14th century, the Wallace surname was also associated with the family of Adam Wallang or Wallace, a Scottish landowner who held lands in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire. Some records from this period mention a John Wallace, who served as a witness to several charters granted by King Robert II of Scotland in the late 14th century.

Another notable figure with the Wallace surname was William Wallace, a Scottish mathematician and philosopher who lived from 1768 to 1843. He is best known for his work on the theory of energy and his contributions to the development of the concept of the watt, which is named after his friend James Watt.

In the literary world, the Wallace surname is associated with Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, explorer, and co-discoverer of the theory of evolution through natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. He was born in 1823 and died in 1913, and his extensive travels and research in Southeast Asia and the Amazon Basin made significant contributions to the field of biogeography and evolutionary biology.

The Wallace surname has also been prominent in the realm of politics. Henry A. Wallace was an American politician and agronomist who served as the 33rd Vice President of the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1941 to 1945. He was born in 1888 and died in 1965.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Wallace

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

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

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

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