East

loc · English · Latin script

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

East is a name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. It appears chiefly in English and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: person living in the eastern part of a place, to the east of a place, or coming from the east.

rarermore common
  • BSBahamas1 in 186◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 323
  • GRGreece1 in 342

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

≈13K ●

across 7 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
340 ●

183K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.3K ◐

Netherlands

Spellings & scripts●

EastLatin · English●7.7M records
อาร์ทThai · Thai●310 records

Locally spelled Oost in NL Netherlands, BE Belgium, อาร์ท in TH Thailand and Arth in IN India.

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●

person living in the eastern part of a place, to the east of a place, or coming from the east.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where East is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom870,82815K rec.—listedEast159
CA Canada198,6543.3K rec.—1East95
AU Australia59,0347.1K rec.—1East123
GR Greece26,990152 rec.——East9
NL Netherlands13,029△2K rec.1 in 1.3K13KOost61
BS Bahamas7,85777 rec.——East5
ZA South Africa5,726393 rec.——East27
NZ New Zealand1,427511 rec.——East52
BE Belgium590493 rec.—147Oost61
TH Thailand490491 rec.—#811,769อาร์ท41
DE Germany4791.2K rec.—listedEast42
RU Russia468455 rec.——East11

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English7.7M21%
  • Hindi1.4M4%
  • English (Nigeria)384K1%
  • Swahili223K1%
  • Greek27K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English7,740,40721%
Hindi1,411,3954%
English (Nigeria)384,1541%
Swahili222,8771%
Greek26,9951%

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◐

East is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish name6.2K records spelled East12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Italy

    Languages: Spanish, Italian

    Also written Este, Éste, Esté, Ěast, Ëstë

  • French name1.3K records spelled East5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada, Gabon

    Also written Est, Ëast

57 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●

East 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 the east; first attested Ralph del Est 1196–1237 Colch (Essex)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, the eastern part of a town or settlement, or outside it to the east, or regional name for one who had migrated westwards (and hence was regarded as coming from the east; cf.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, The direction of the earth's rotation, specifically 90°.

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

  • In English, ko; eastern region ko yaka yé yama

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In German, Howden I. Vars.: Eng.; Halbrook see Holbrook Vars.: Halls; Hallman. Ger.: Halle(r) (see also Heller); Hal(l)mann. Swed.; Hallen, Hallin, Hallman Malden, Haldin, Hallding, Holdane. Dims.: Fr.:

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

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●

0510152020202514 · 2022

Show as table
East in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 2018–2025
Yearrecords
20185
20195
202012
202110
202214
20239
202411
202514

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 8 years between 2018–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

180018501900195020002050Edward H. East, b. 1830Alfred East, b. 1844Edward Murray East, b. 1879John Porter East, b. 1931Nathan East, b. 1955Jeff East, b. 1957May East, b. 1959Fleur East, b. 1987Shawn Johnson East, b. 1992Chloe East, b. 2001

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 29 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting East
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201013K#2,843
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200012K#2,684
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202012K#2,922
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—92#24,096
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202082#49,348
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—51#5,875
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—48#46,269
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—48#45,681
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202044#49,348
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—39#15,181
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—30#40,041
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—18#6,296

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 · 46 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name East?
We estimate roughly 13 thousand people bear East (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does East have the most bearers?
East is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled east.
What does the name East mean?
Recorded meaning: person living in the eastern part of a place, to the east of a place, or coming from the east.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/east

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, “East”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how East parses inside a full name →