Explore the Family Name Gunnarson

The meaning of Gunnarson

1. Americanized form (and a rare Swedish variant) of Swedish and Icelandic Gunnarsson: patronymic from the personal name Gunnar, from Old Norse Gunnarr, a compound of gunn ‘battle’ + arr ‘warrior’. Compare Gunderson and Gunnerson. 2. Americanized form of Norwegian and Danish Gunnarsen, a cognate of 1 above. Some characteristic forenames: Scandinavian Agust, Lennart, Nils, Sven, Thor.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

How common is the last name Gunnarson in the United States?

Based on the Decennial U.S. Census data, the surname Gunnarson has seen a slight decrease in popularity from 2000 to 2010. The rank of the surname slipped from 45,829 in 2000 to 46,138 in 2010, marking a 0.67% decrease. However, the count of individuals with this surname increased by 5.24% in the same period, rising from 439 to 462. The proportion per 100k people remained constant at 0.16.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#45,829	#46,138	-0.67%
Count	439	462	5.24%
Proportion per 100k	0.16	0.16	0%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Gunnarson

Regarding ethnicity, the Decennial U.S. Census data suggests that most people with the Gunnarson surname identified as White in both 2000 and 2010, with a slight increase of 0.21% over the decade. In 2000, there were no recorded Gunnarsons identifying as Asian/Pacific Islander or Hispanic, but by 2010, there was a 1.08% representation for Asian/Pacific Islanders. There was no change in representation for those identifying as American Indian and Alaskan Native. For those identifying as two or more races, there was a decrease from 2.51% in 2000 to 1.73% in 2010. No data was available for Black ethnic identity in this period.

	2000	2010	Change
White	95.9%	96.1%	0.21%
Two or More Races	2.51%	1.73%	-31.08%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	1.08%	0%
Hispanic	0%	0%	0%
Black	0%	0%	0%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	0%	0%	0%