Explore the Family Name Scharnhorst

The meaning of Scharnhorst

North German: habitational name from any of various places, for example near Dortmund and near Celle, apparently so named from the ancient Germanic elements skarn ‘damp, dirty’ + horst ‘wooded hill’.

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

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

The surname Scharnhorst slipped in popularity from 2000 to 2010, according to data from the Decennial U.S. Census. In the year 2000, it was ranked 38,524th most popular surname, dropping to 40,371st place by 2010 - a decline of 4.79 percent. Despite this drop in ranking, the count of people with this surname saw a marginal increase from 540 in 2000 to 542 in 2010, exhibiting a growth of 0.37 percent. However, the proportion per 100,000 people decreased by 10 percent over the same period.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#38,524	#40,371	-4.79%
Count	540	542	0.37%
Proportion per 100k	0.2	0.18	-10%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Scharnhorst

In terms of ethnicity, the majority of individuals bearing the Scharnhorst surname identified as White. This demographic saw a slight decrease of 0.56 percent from 94.44 percent in 2000 to 93.91 percent in 2010, according to the Decennial U.S. Census. While there were no recorded individuals identifying as Asian/Pacific Islander or Black in either year, there was a small percentage that identified as having two or more races or as American Indian and Alaskan Native. Notably, the Hispanic demographic, which had no representation in 2000, emerged at 1.85 percent in 2010. For those identifying as American Indian and Alaskan Native, there was a significant drop of 33.33 percent over the decade.

	2000	2010	Change
White	94.44%	93.91%	-0.56%
Two or More Races	2.41%	2.21%	-8.3%
Hispanic	0%	1.85%	0%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	2.22%	1.48%	-33.33%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	0%	0%
Black	0%	0%	0%