Explore the Family Name Snipe

The meaning of Snipe

English: 1. from the Middle English personal name Snipe, Snype (Old English Snip, Old Norse Snípr), or directly from the Middle English or Old Norse bird-name which gave rise to it. 2. in Yorkshire, a variant of Knipe, pronounced Nipe, with prosthetic S-.

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

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

Based on the Decennial U.S. Census data, the surname Snipe saw a slight decrease in popularity between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, it was ranked 31,085 and had an occurrence of 706 per 100,000 people, falling to rank 32,438 with 709 occurrences per 100,000 in 2010. This represents a decrease of 4.35% in ranking and a marginal growth of 0.42% in occurrence.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#31,085	#32,438	-4.35%
Count	706	709	0.42%
Proportion per 100k	0.26	0.24	-7.69%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Snipe

The ethnic identity associated with the surname Snipe also saw some shifts from 2000 to 2010, as shown in the Decennial U.S. Census. The majority of individuals with this surname identified as Black, though this percentage decreased slightly from 79.60% to 77.43%. The proportion of those identifying as White remained relatively stable at around 15.8%. Notably, there was a substantial increase in individuals identifying with two or more ethnicities, from 1.84% to 3.24%. Additionally, the proportion of individuals identifying as Hispanic grew by 33.07%, although this still represents a small portion of individuals with this surname. There were no recorded instances of the surname among Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian and Alaskan Native groups.

	2000	2010	Change
Black	79.6%	77.43%	-2.73%
White	15.72%	15.8%	0.51%
Two or More Races	1.84%	3.24%	76.09%
Hispanic	1.27%	1.69%	33.07%
Asian/Pacific Islander	0%	0%	0%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	0%	0%	0%