Abney
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Abney is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Lesotho it is the 7th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Abney, Derbyshire; first attested Roger de Abbeneye Edl DbCh.
- USUnited States1 in 33K◐
- CACanada1 in 58K
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 85K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈10.0K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 322 ●
- 1 in 33K ◐
across 2 countries
recorded for this name
96K records
Official registry-verified
United States
Spellings & scripts●
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
from Abney, Derbyshire; first attested Roger de Abbeneye Edl DbCh
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 9,948 | 86K rec. | 1 in 33K | 9.9K | Abney | 322 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 2,735 | 2.8K rec. | — | listed | Abney | 27 |
| CA Canada | — | 1,295 | 1.3K rec. | — | — | Abney | 35 |
| AU Australia | — | 581 | 578 rec. | — | — | Abney | 10 |
| DE Germany | — | 577 | 576 rec. | — | — | Abney | 21 |
| IT Italy | — | 440 | 466 rec. | — | — | Abney | 3 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 299 | 312 rec. | — | — | Abney | 5 |
| JM Jamaica | #660 | 260 | 267 rec. | — | — | Abney | 1 |
| SG Singapore | — | 252 | 262 rec. | — | — | Abney | 1 |
| LS Lesotho | #7 | 250 | 537 rec. | — | — | Abney | 2 |
| DZ Algeria | — | 213 | 220 rec. | — | — | Abney | 2 |
| CO Colombia | — | 166 | 165 rec. | — | — | Abney | 4 |
Roughly 9.9K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 33K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English92K86%
- 3.7K3%
- Spanish3.6K3%
- German9611%
- French8491%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 92,136 | 86% |
| 3,727 | 3% | |
| Spanish | 3,576 | 3% |
| German | 961 | 1% |
| French | 849 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Abney is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Roger de Abbeneye Edl DbCh. From Abney (Db).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name●
- Edward Abneyb. 1631GBEnglish politician
- Thomas Abneyb. 1640GBLord Mayor of London
- William de Wiveleslie Abneyb. 1843GBBritish astronomer, chemist and photographer (1843–1920)
- Don Abneyb. 1923USAmerican musician (1923-2000)
- Etterlene Louise Rodriguezb. 1935USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer
- Marvin Abneyb. 1949USAmerican politician
- Larry Abneyb. 1977USAmerican basketball player (born 1977)
- Derek Abneyb. 1980USAll-American college football player, professional football player, wide receiver, kick returner
- Jill Abneyhistorian, University of Southern Mississippi
- Lebastian AbneyUSbasketball player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 13 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.9K | #3,579 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.7K | #3,355 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.4K | #3,677 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 30 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 29 | #94,398 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2010 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1913 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2000 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #247,563 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #301,550 |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 15 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Abney?
- We estimate roughly 10.0 thousand people bear Abney (counting its spellings and scripts) across 2 countries in our records.
- In which country does Abney have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 9.9 thousand people bear Abney in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled abney.
- How common is Abney compared with other names?
- In Lesotho, Abney is the 7th most common surname of 3,869 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Abney mean?
- Recorded meaning: from Abney, Derbyshire; first attested Roger de Abbeneye Edl DbCh
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/abneyThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Abney” — the 7th most common surname in Lesotho. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.