Knowles
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Knowles is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In the Bahamas it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) Person living at the top of a hill; (ii) ‘son of Knoll (ii)’.
- BSBahamas1 in 44◐
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 5K
- AUAustralia1 in 6.1K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈29K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 413 ●
- 1 in 12K ◐
across 11 countries
recorded for this name
317K records
Official registry-verified
United States
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●
(i) Person living at the top of a hill; (ii) ‘son of Knoll (ii)’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #429 | 46,858 | 34K rec. | — | listed | Knowles | 202 |
| US United States | #985 | 28,460 | 246K rec. | 1 in 12K | 28K | Knowles | 413 |
| BS Bahamas | #2 | 15,574 | 637 rec. | — | 7.5K | Knowles | 95 |
| AU Australia | #594 | 13,782 | 13K rec. | — | — | Knowles | 167 |
| CA Canada | #954 | 6,944 | 6.6K rec. | — | — | Knowles | 132 |
| IT Italy | — | 1,532 | 1.5K rec. | — | — | Knowles | 22 |
| NZ New Zealand | #496 | 1,096 | 657 rec. | — | — | Knowles | 80 |
| IE Ireland | — | 775 | 695 rec. | — | — | Knowles | 60 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 750 | 725 rec. | — | — | Knowles | 55 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 357 | 323 rec. | 1 in 48K | 357 | Knowles | 35 |
| EG Egypt | — | 286 | 285 rec. | — | — | Knowles | 8 |
| TH Thailand | — | 264 | 198 rec. | — | #1,020,741 | Knowles | 32 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English346K86%
- Spanish10K3%
- 10K3%
- French3.3K1%
- Chinese3.1K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 346,049 | 86% |
| Spanish | 10,438 | 3% |
| 10,244 | 3% | |
| French | 3,318 | 1% |
| Chinese | 3,074 | 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●
Knowles 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, topographic name for someone who lived at the top of a hill or by a hillock, from a genitive or plural form of Middle English knoll ‘hilltop’, ‘hillock’ (Old English cnoll, see Knoll), or habitational name from any of the many places named with this word.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, lived at the top of a hill, from a gen. or pi. form of ME knol (see Knoll i). 2. pair, from the same word used as a by¬ name for a short, stout person (see Knoll 2). Vars.: Knollys, Nowles. (Of 2 only): Knowlson; Knowling.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Tnuthghail (see Newell).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A surname from Middle English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, John, author
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 3 |
| 1901 | 3 |
| 1911 | 2 |
| 1921 | 5 |
| 1931 | 4 |
| 1941 | 5 |
| 1951 | 9 |
| 1961 | 10 |
| 1971 | 2 |
| 1981 | 5 |
| 1991 | 7 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Bernard Knowlesb. 1900GBEnglish film director, producer, cinematographer and screenwriter (1900-1975)
- Patric Knowlesb. 1911GBactor, novelist
- William Standish Knowlesb. 1917USAmerican chemist (1917–2012)
- Tony Knowlesb. 1943USGovernor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002
- Cyril Knowlesb. 1944GBFootballer and manager (1944-1991)
- Mathew Knowlesb. 1952USAmerican music executive, businessman, record producer, and manager
- Tina Knowlesb. 1954USAmerican businesswoman and fashion designer, mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles
- Mark Knowlesb. 1971BSBahamian tennis player
- Beyoncéb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer-songwriter (born 1981)
- Solange Knowlesb. 1986USAmerican singer, songwriter, and actress (born 1986)
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 37 sources across 25 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 · 55 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Knowles?
- We estimate roughly 29 thousand people bear Knowles (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Knowles have the most bearers?
- Knowles is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled knowles.
- How common is Knowles compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Knowles is the 429th most common surname of 1,169,970 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Knowles mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) Person living at the top of a hill; (ii) ‘son of Knoll (ii)’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/knowlesThe 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, “Knowles” — the 429th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.