Brown
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Brown is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown.
- JMJamaica1 in 45◐
- USUnited States1 in 231
- NZNew Zealand1 in 245
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.5M ●
- #74 ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 590 ●
- 1 in 50 ◐
across 11 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
14M records
Official registry-verified
St. Kitts & Nevis
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 a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 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 | #5 | 1,437,026 | 12M rec. | 1 in 231 | 1.4M | Brown | 590 |
| GB United Kingdom | #5 | 923,397 | 781K rec. | — | — | Brown | 340 |
| AU Australia | #4 | 325,836 | 303K rec. | — | — | Brown | 311 |
| CA Canada | #3 | 258,067 | 249K rec. | — | 1 | Brown | 275 |
| JM Jamaica | #1 | 106,060 | 38K rec. | — | — | Brown | 77 |
| IT Italy | #7 | 63,016 | 64K rec. | — | listed | Brown | 116 |
| DE Germany | #109 | 46,682 | 46K rec. | — | — | Brown | 169 |
| RU Russia | — | 33,458 | 34K rec. | — | — | Brown | 88 |
| NZ New Zealand | #3 | 30,800 | 25K rec. | — | — | Brown | 173 |
| GH Ghana | #96 | 24,238 | 24K rec. | — | — | Brown | 97 |
| SG Singapore | #10 | 24,028 | 25K rec. | — | — | Brown | 78 |
| EG Egypt | #81 | 22,797 | 23K rec. | — | — | Brown | 45 |
Roughly 1.4M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 231). 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●
- English16M83%
- 1.1M6%
- Spanish567K3%
- Welsh268K1%
- German122K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 15,828,203 | 83% |
| 1,126,548 | 6% | |
| Spanish | 567,354 | 3% |
| Welsh | 268,359 | 1% |
| German | 121,566 | 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●
Brown 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.
After the Jewish Edict for Surnames the family Braunschweig was added to: Mayer Braunschweig Braun, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, Descriptive surname from Old French/Old English brun ‘brown’, usually referring to complexion; Patric Brun recorded in 1194–1214.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from OE brun or possibly OFr brun ‘brown’; first attested Brunus 1066 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, English surname from a word meaning “brown”.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In English, English equivalent used in place of a German surname
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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 |
|---|---|
| 1906 | 1 |
| 1910 | 1 |
| 1911 | 1 |
| 1914 | 1 |
| 1915 | 1 |
| 1916 | 3 |
| 1918 | 2 |
| 1921 | 1 |
| 1922 | 1 |
| 1924 | 2 |
| 1925 | 2 |
| 1927 | 1 |
| 1928 | 2 |
| 1929 | 1 |
| 1930 | 3 |
| 1931 | 2 |
| 1933 | 1 |
| 1934 | 1 |
| 1935 | 1 |
| 1936 | 1 |
| 1937 | 2 |
| 1938 | 2 |
| 1939 | 1 |
| 1940 | 1 |
| 1941 | 3 |
| 1942 | 2 |
| 1943 | 1 |
| 1944 | 4 |
| 1945 | 4 |
| 1946 | 5 |
| 1947 | 2 |
| 1948 | 1 |
| 1949 | 1 |
| 1950 | 4 |
| 1951 | 6 |
| 1952 | 4 |
| 1953 | 6 |
| 1954 | 4 |
| 1955 | 3 |
| 1956 | 5 |
| 1957 | 7 |
| 1958 | 5 |
| 1959 | 5 |
| 1960 | 7 |
| 1961 | 4 |
| 1962 | 4 |
| 1963 | 3 |
| 1964 | 4 |
| 1965 | 8 |
| 1966 | 4 |
| 1967 | 6 |
| 1968 | 2 |
| 1969 | 2 |
| 1970 | 6 |
| 1971 | 5 |
| 1972 | 3 |
| 1973 | 3 |
| 1974 | 6 |
| 1975 | 5 |
| 1976 | 6 |
| 1977 | 5 |
| 1978 | 10 |
| 1979 | 7 |
| 1980 | 3 |
| 1981 | 5 |
| 1982 | 9 |
| 1983 | 4 |
| 1984 | 5 |
| 1985 | 10 |
| 1986 | 5 |
| 1987 | 7 |
| 1988 | 9 |
| 1989 | 5 |
| 1990 | 7 |
| 1991 | 7 |
| 1992 | 3 |
| 1993 | 7 |
| 1994 | 7 |
| 1995 | 10 |
| 1996 | 11 |
| 1997 | 2 |
| 1998 | 9 |
| 1999 | 6 |
| 2000 | 6 |
| 2001 | 7 |
| 2002 | 6 |
| 2003 | 10 |
| 2004 | 8 |
| 2005 | 8 |
| 2006 | 8 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2009 | 10 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2011 | 6 |
| 2012 | 6 |
| 2013 | 3 |
| 2014 | 13 |
| 2015 | 10 |
| 2016 | 11 |
| 2017 | 14 |
| 2018 | 6 |
| 2019 | 8 |
| 2020 | 4 |
| 2021 | 4 |
| 2022 | 2 |
| 2023 | 6 |
| 2024 | 6 |
EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 108 years between 1906–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Robert Brownb. 1773GBBritish botanist (1773-1858), discoverer of the cell nucleus and of Brownian Motion (1773–1858)
- Clarence Brownb. 1890USAmerican film director (1890–1987)
- Violet Brownb. 1900JMJamaican supercentenarian (1900–2017)
- Herbert Brownb. 1912USAmerican chemist (1912–2004)
- Jerry Brownb. 1938USGovernor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019 (born 1938)
- Gordon Brownb. 1951GBPrime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010
- Ketanji Brown Jacksonb. 1970USAmerican lawyer and jurist (born 1970)
- Blake Livelyb. 1987USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1987)
- Chris Brownb. 1989USAmerican singer and rapper (born 1989)
- Millie Bobby Brownb. 2004ESBritish actress (born 2004)
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 80 sources across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4M | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4M | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4M | #4 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 2.9K | #313 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 2.3K | #2,184 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2.3K | #2,184 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.7K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1K | #9,323 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 888 | #1,337 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 849 | #10,712 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 772 | #1,283 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 671 | #2,725 |
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 · 334 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Brown?
- We estimate roughly 1.5 million people bear Brown (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Brown have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 1.4 million people bear Brown in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled brown.
- How common is Brown compared with other names?
- In the United States, Brown is the 5th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Brown mean?
- Recorded meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown…
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/brownThe 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, “Brown” — the 5th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.