Johnson

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Johnson is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Patronymic from the forename John, widely spread in Scotland; early forms include Johanis and filz Johan, with Walter Jones Sone recorded in 1298.

rarermore common
  • JMJamaica1 in 70◐
  • KPNorth Korea1 in 108
  • NONorway1 in 142

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

≈2.0M ●

across 9 countries

#57 ●

of 21M surnames

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
602 ●

19M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 142 ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

JohnsonLatin · English●20M records
존슨Hangul · Korean●3 records
ҶонсонCyrillic · Tajik●0 records

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●

Patronymic from the forename John, widely spread in Scotland; early forms include Johanis and filz Johan, with Walter Jones Sone recorded in 1298. Gaelic form MacIan.

Sources 1

  • Scottish Surnames

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Johnson is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#21,932,81216M rec.1 in 1721.9MJohnson602
GB United Kingdom#6848,810767K rec.—listedJohnson301
CA Canada#2303,739300K rec.—1Johnson257
AU Australia#5285,673275K rec.—1Johnson288
NG Nigeria#2387,614103K rec.——Johnson134
IT Italy#377,54079K rec.——Johnson116
JM Jamaica#468,46930K rec.——Johnson66
DE Germany#7459,89960K rec.—listedJohnson172
RU Russia—41,79943K rec.——Johnson92
NO Norway#59338,438△3.3K rec.1 in 14238KJohnson87
SG Singapore#533,97735K rec.——Johnson92
PH Philippines#36032,10339K rec.——Johnson88

Roughly 1.9M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 172). 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●

  • English20M83%
  • 1.4M6%
  • Spanish739K3%
  • German155K1%
  • Welsh154K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English20,427,01983%
1,415,6566%
Spanish739,3043%
German154,7771%
Welsh153,8271%

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◐

Johnson is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname1.5M records spelled Johnson4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada

    Also written John-Son, Johns-On

  • Spanish surname1.2M records spelled Johnson12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Johns-On, Jöhnson, John-Son

  • Polish surname63K records spelled Johnson16 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Dzonson, Джонсън, Džonson, Џонсон

  • Indonesian surname31K records spelled Johnson4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Nigeria

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Jóhñsóñ, Jõhňšõň

  • Hungarian surname26K records spelled Johnson6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, United States, Finland, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Jõhñšöñ, Jõhñşõñ, Jöhnson

  • Thai surname22K records spelled Johnson20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Thailand, United Kingdom, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written จอห์นสัน, จอนสัน, จอร์นสัน, Chonsan, จอหน์สัน

94 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●

Johnson 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, son of John; first attested John Jonessone 1287 AD i (Sr)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Penis.

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

  • In English, Eyvind, Swedish author (Nobel

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In German, Patronym zu John/Johann ‘Sohn des John’; mit -son/-sson und Schreibvarianten ss/ß, h, n. Bearer count: 1026.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

  • In English, Patronymic meaning 'son of John'.

    as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam

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●

050100150190019502000111 · 2000

Show as table
Johnson in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
188013
188111
188211
188312
188413
188513
188611
188711
188818
188913
189016
189124
189220
189313
18946
189513
189620
189711
189810
189922
190036
190118
190213
190314
190420
190538
190625
190716
190817
190924
191024
191118
191242
191332
191452
191574
191670
191754
191879
191977
192069
192185
192252
192363
192464
192557
192661
192757
192866
192958
193052
193133
193254
193338
193440
193539
193637
193737
193844
193937
194032
194137
194254
194351
194455
194547
194640
194751
194860
194945
195046
195139
195245
195340
195441
195531
195626
195741
195827
195929
196038
196142
196231
196341
196443
196537
196631
196729
196831
196929
197019
197122
197230
197318
197432
197525
197635
197721
197830
197936
198055
198163
198292
198385
198468
198582
198689
198799
198891
198998
199089
199192
199287
1993106
199487
199593
1996102
199785
199865
199978
2000111
200182
200279
200397
200487
200578
200694
200795
200871
200985
201060
201172
201264
201362
201461
201575
201672
201761
201855
201959
202062
202146
202249
202348
202432
202534

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 146 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1400160018002000Ben Jonson, b. 1572Samuel Johnson, b. 1709Jack Johnson, b. 1878Eyvind Johnson, b. 1900Philip Johnson, b. 1906Lady Bird Johnson, b. 1912Boris Johnson, b. 1964Dwayne Johnson, b. 1972Ashley Johnson, b. 1983Dakota Johnson, b. 1989

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 118 sources across 64 countries.

Official registers attesting Johnson
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.9M#2
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.9M#2
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.9M#2
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—7.9K#1,129
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20207.3K#2,906
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520253.1K#20
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2.9K#361
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.7K#585
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—1.7K#2,756
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—1.7K#2,755
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—973#478
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025862—

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 · 788 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Johnson?
We estimate roughly 2.0 million people bear Johnson (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Johnson have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.9 million people bear Johnson in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled johnson.
How common is Johnson compared with other names?
In the United States, Johnson is the 2nd most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Johnson mean?
Recorded meaning: Patronymic from the forename John, widely spread in Scotland; early forms include Johanis and filz Johan, with Walter Jones Sone recorded in 1298.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/johnson

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, “Johnson” — the 2nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Johnson parses inside a full name →