Dukes

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Dukes is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 27th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Staffs; ER Yorks; London. variant of Duke , with genitival or postmedieval excrescent -s.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 15K◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 28K
  • AUAustralia1 in 29K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈22K ●

across 7 countries

Sources
380 ●

205K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 15K ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

Main GB Location (1881): Staffs; ER Yorks; London. variant of Duke , with genitival or postmedieval excrescent -s.

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Deshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Dukes is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—22,187180K rec.1 in 15K22KDukes380
GB United Kingdom—8,3887.9K rec.——Dukes118
AU Australia—2,8642.8K rec.——Dukes83
CA Canada—2,1692.2K rec.——Dukes55
DE Germany—1,1891.2K rec.——Dukes33
IT Italy—798796 rec.——Dukes13
RU Russia—533543 rec.——Dukes9
GH Ghana#497521526 rec.——Dukes12
MY Malaysia—391399 rec.——Dukes8
LR Liberia#273321.1K rec.——Dukes2
TR Türkiye—310312 rec.——Dukes4
HU Hungary—5248 rec.——Dukes4

Roughly 22K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 15K). 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●

  • English204K85%
  • 7.7K3%
  • Spanish7.3K3%
  • German2.3K1%
  • Welsh1.6K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English204,42285%
7,7113%
Spanish7,2673%
German2,3051%
Welsh1,5641%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Dukes is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname9.7K records spelled Dukes7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Duke'S, Dúkés

  • a separate surname8.5K records spelled Dukes2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Timor-Leste

    Also written Duke-S

  • French surname1.6K records spelled Dukes3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, United Kingdom, Gabon

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Dûkëš

  • Polish surname964 records spelled Dukes15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Czechia, United Kingdom, Poland

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Russian

    Also written Дьюкс, Дюкс, Дукес

36 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Dukes 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 enm, plural of duk

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Breton, duchesse

    as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)

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●

18001850190019502000Lipót Dukes, b. 1810Ashley Dukes, b. 1885Gordon Dukes, b. 1888Walter Dukes, b. 1930Paul Dukes, b. 1934David Dukes, b. 1945Alan Dukes, b. 1945Rob Dukes, b. 1968Dedric Dukes, b. 1992

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 16 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting Dukes
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201022K#1,622
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202021K#1,644
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200021K#1,577
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—12#109,635
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20075#76,195
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20244#118,617
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—4—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19962—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—2#15,088
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—1#246,689
KN St. Kitts & NevisSt Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 202620261#181
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—1#25,984

Reference works 4

  • 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)

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 Dukes?
We estimate roughly 22 thousand people bear Dukes (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Dukes have the most bearers?
We estimate about 22 thousand people bear Dukes in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled dukes.
How common is Dukes compared with other names?
In Liberia, Dukes is the 27th most common surname of 6,092 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Dukes mean?
Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Staffs; ER Yorks; London. variant of Duke , with genitival or postmedieval excrescent -s.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dukes

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Dukes” — the 27th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dukes parses inside a full name →