New

loc · English · Latin script

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

New is a name, most frequently recorded in Australia. It appears chiefly in English and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone new to a place; or person who lives by a yew tree.

rarermore common
  • BSBahamas1 in 18◐
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 35
  • AUAustralia1 in 71

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

≈12K ●

across 8 countries

Sources
350 ●

128K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 28K ◐

United States

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Néw in DZ Algeria, MA Morocco and Nëw in CM Cameroon.

Meaning & origin●

From a medieval nickname for someone new to a place; or person who lives by a yew tree.

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.

Where New is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AU Australia816,7705.4K rec.——New136
GB United Kingdom552,98812K rec.—listedNew139
CA Canada459,0652.2K rec.—1New84
NZ New Zealand236,2561.2K rec.——New43
BS Bahamas82,42761 rec.——New8
US United States11,90395K rec.1 in 28K12KNew350
RU Russia4,118546 rec.——New23
DE Germany3,8951.1K rec.——New55
AT Austria2,660127 rec.——New14
NL Netherlands1,211144 rec.——New19
CH Switzerland78476 rec.——New10
BV Bouvet Island3060 rec.——New1

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

Languages●

  • English36M50%
  • Hindi1M1%
  • Spanish102K1%
  • Arabic56K1%
  • Finnish39K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English35,838,43350%
Hindi1,024,2301%
Spanish101,8361%
Arabic56,4371%
Finnish39,4691%

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◐

New is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname9.2K records spelled New28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Italy, Colombia, Dominican Republic

    Languages: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

    Also written Nëw, Nêw, ̶N̶e̶w̶, Ńęŵ, Ņėw

  • Hindi name9.1K records spelled New7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Nëw, Ñew, Nèw

  • French surname7.0K records spelled New26 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada, Russia, United States

    Also written Nëw, Nęw, Nēw, Nêw, Ñěw

  • Indonesian surname2.4K records spelled New10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Cameroon

    Also written Ñëw, New', Nëw, Ñéw, Nēw

  • Lao given name1.6K records spelled New39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Thailand, China, United States

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written หนิ้ว, Niu, Nua, หนิว, หนว

60 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●

New 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, (1) from OE nīwe, ME newe ‘new’, ‘the newcomer’; first attested William le Neuwe 1221 AssWa. (2) from residence near a yew tree, OE ēow, īw; first attested John atte Newe 1327 SRSo

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, topographic name for someone who lived by a yew tree, from a misdivision of the Middle English phrase atten ewe ‘at the yew’ (Old English cet deem eowe).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, nickname for a newcomer to an area, from Middle English newe ‘new’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, Recently made, or created.

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

  • In English, nina

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

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●

1700180019002000Anthony New, b. 1747John C. New, b. 1831Harry S. New, b. 1858Elisa New, b. 1959Steve New, b. 1960Peter New, b. 1971Chris New, b. 1981Hannah New, b. 1984Gemma New, b. 1986Tarah New, b. 1987

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 New
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201012K#3,011
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200012K#2,858
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202011K#3,091
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—694#941
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—50#104,821
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202230—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—28#94,398
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—26#71,455
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—26#69,549
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20268—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—8#154,816
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20267—

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 · 85 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name New?
We estimate roughly 12 thousand people bear New (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does New have the most bearers?
New is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled new.
What does the name New mean?
Recorded meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone new to a place; or person who lives by a yew tree.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/new

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, “New”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how New parses inside a full name →