British
loc · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
British is a name, most frequently recorded in Canada. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: The residents or inhabitants of Great Britain.
- CACanada1 in 1.7K◐
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 72K
- USUnited States1 in 759K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- 398K ●
- Sources
- 61 ●
in 5 countries
9.1K records
Official registry-verified
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Brïtïsh in JM Jamaica.
Meaning & origin●
The residents or inhabitants of Great Britain.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA Canada | 127,498 | 63 rec. | — | — | British | 7 |
| US United States | 6,862 | 1.3K rec. | — | 265 | British | 61 |
| GB United Kingdom | 3,922 | 7.3K rec. | — | — | British | 22 |
| AU Australia | 785 | 57 rec. | — | — | British | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | 32 | 13 rec. | — | — | British | 1 |
| IO British Indian Ocean Territory | 10 | 0 rec. | — | — | British | 1 |
| JM Jamaica | 7 | 40 rec. | — | — | Brïtïsh | 4 |
| GA Gabon | — | — | — | 1 | — | — |
| IN India | — | 38 rec. | — | 1 | — | 9 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English139K34%
- Spanish1.3K1%
- Chinese9051%
- Afrikaans2401%
- Hindi2171%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 139,114 | 34% |
| Spanish | 1,342 | 1% |
| Chinese | 905 | 1% |
| Afrikaans | 240 | 1% |
| Hindi | 217 | 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●
British is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, pert, to Britain
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In French, typically British
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 |
|---|---|
| 1969 | 6 |
| 1971 | 5 |
| 1973 | 5 |
| 1979 | 6 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1985 | 5 |
| 1986 | 7 |
| 1987 | 7 |
| 1988 | 18 |
| 1989 | 15 |
| 1990 | 13 |
| 1991 | 6 |
| 1992 | 10 |
| 1993 | 6 |
| 1994 | 11 |
| 1995 | 6 |
| 1996 | 5 |
| 1997 | 5 |
| 1999 | 5 |
| 2005 | 7 |
| 2011 | 5 |
| 2014 | 20 |
| 2015 | 21 |
| 2016 | 15 |
| 2017 | 14 |
| 2018 | 17 |
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2022 | 7 |
| 2023 | 6 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | 6 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 33 years between 1969–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Evidence●
Attested in 4 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 265 | #25,961 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 97 | #25,961 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2015 | 21 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2014 | 20 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1988 | 18 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2018 | 17 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2016 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1989 | 15 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2017 | 14 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2019 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1994 | 11 | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 70 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name British?
- Our records include 398,303 bearers of British across 5 countries — a sample of the full distribution.
- In which country does British have the most bearers?
- British is most frequently recorded in Canada, where it is most often spelled british.
- What does the name British mean?
- Recorded meaning: The residents or inhabitants of Great Britain.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/britishThe 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, “British”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.