Back
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Back is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Luxembourg it is the 68th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Finnish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) Person living at the back of a settlement; (ii) on a hill ridge; (iii) nickname for a hunchback or similar deformity; (iv) from the Old English male personal name Bacca; (v) nickname for someone t.
- FIFinland1 in 2.5K◐
- SESweden1 in 2.8K
- DEGermany1 in 18K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈25K ●
- Sources
- 299 ●
- 1 in 2.5K ◐
across 15 countries
87K records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Bäck in SE Sweden, AT Austria and Baeck in BE Belgium, ES Spain.
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●
(i) Person living at the back of a settlement; (ii) on a hill ridge; (iii) nickname for a hunchback or similar deformity; (iv) from the Old English male personal name Bacca; (v) nickname for someone thought to resemble a bat; (vi) different form of Bach.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 8,762 | 63K rec. | 1 in 38K | 8.8K | Back | 299 |
| BR Brazil | — | 8,760△ | 9 rec. | 1 in 24K | 8.8K | — | 5 |
| DE Germany | — | 6,159 | 5.8K rec. | — | listed | Back | 107 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 5,506 | 5K rec. | — | listed | Back | 124 |
| SE Sweden | #272 | 3,682 | 2K rec. | 1 in 2.8K | 3.7K | Bäck | 54 |
| AU Australia | — | 3,372 | 3.3K rec. | — | — | Back | 98 |
| FI Finland | #454 | 2,261△ | 355 rec. | 1 in 2.5K | 2.3K | Back | 28 |
| CA Canada | — | 1,490 | 1.5K rec. | — | — | Back | 73 |
| LU Luxembourg | #68 | 684 | 27 rec. | — | 680 | Back | 18 |
| AT Austria | — | 583 | 361 rec. | — | — | Bäck | 24 |
| BE Belgium | — | 539 | 352 rec. | 1 in 22K | 539 | Baeck | 33 |
| IT Italy | — | 414 | 449 rec. | — | — | Back | 12 |
Roughly 8.8K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 38K). 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●
- English73K55%
- Finnish13K10%
- Portuguese12K9%
- German8.1K6%
- French4.6K4%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 72,569 | 55% |
| Finnish | 12,803 | 10% |
| Portuguese | 12,378 | 9% |
| German | 8,088 | 6% |
| French | 4,628 | 4% |
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●
Back is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from OE Bacca or a nickname from OE bæc ‘back’; first attested Godwine Bace c1055 OEByn (Somerset)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, poOma = woma; to turn the back, pove; to carry on the _ back, popo; back of the head, n., konga
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In English, At or near the rear.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Übername zu mhd. backe/wange 'Backe, Wange'; Belegzahl 1465. Im nd. Raum auch Berufsname zu mnd. bāk(e) 'Hinterbacke, Schinken'.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In Swedish, back; position behind most players on the team
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 61 |
| 2000 | 60 |
| 2001 | 56 |
| 2002 | 52 |
| 2003 | 50 |
| 2004 | 48 |
| 2005 | 45 |
| 2006 | 42 |
| 2007 | 39 |
| 2008 | 37 |
| 2009 | 37 |
| 2010 | 37 |
| 2011 | 37 |
| 2012 | 35 |
| 2013 | 33 |
| 2014 | 32 |
| 2015 | 28 |
| 2016 | 26 |
| 2017 | 26 |
| 2018 | 25 |
| 2019 | 23 |
| 2020 | 21 |
SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- George Backb. 1796GBBritish Royal Navy admiral (1796–1878)
- Ernst Emil Alexander Backb. 1881DEGerman physicist (1881–1959)
- Paik Too-chinb. 1908KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean politician (1908-1993)
- Frédéric Backb. 1924CACanadian animator (1924–2013)
- Paek Nam-sunb. 1929KPnot in their usual nameNorth Korean diplomat (1929-2007)
- Kun-Woo Paikb. 1946KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean pianist
- Yvon Backb. 1961FRFrench actor
- Baek Ji-youngb. 1976KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer
- Baek Jin-heeb. 1990KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress
- Baek Se-heeb. 1990KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean essayist
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 33 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.8K | #4,051 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 8.8K | #1,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.5K | #3,811 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.3K | #4,138 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 2.3K | #1,753 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.7K | #611 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 884 | — |
| LU Luxembourg | Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 680 | #72 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 309 | #1,526 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 306 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 302 | #3,914 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 164 | #9,673 |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 71 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Back?
- We estimate roughly 25 thousand people bear Back (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
- In which country does Back have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 8.8 thousand people bear Back in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled back.
- How common is Back compared with other names?
- In Luxembourg, Back is the 68th most common surname of 1,284 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Back mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) Person living at the back of a settlement; (ii) on a hill ridge; (iii) nickname for a hunchback or similar deformity; (iv) from the Old English male personal name Bacca; (v) nickname for someone t…
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/backThe 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, “Back” — the 68th most common surname in Luxembourg. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.