Read
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Read is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 25th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented.
- JMJamaica1 in 143◐
- AUAustralia1 in 638
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 689
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈282K ●
- #278 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 538 ●
- 1 in 1.0K ◐
across 9 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
4.8M records
Official registry-verified
Guyana
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Reed in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 16 more and Reid in AU Australia, JM Jamaica, NZ New Zealand and 2 more.
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) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented by female roe deer’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages 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 | #25 | 337,686 | 292K rec. | — | 7 | Reed | 246 |
| US United States | #34 | 277,030 | 4M rec. | 1 in 1.2K | 277K | Reed | 538 |
| AU Australia | #25 | 131,922 | 130K rec. | — | 4 | Reid | 238 |
| CA Canada | #23 | 100,535 | 102K rec. | — | 17 | Reed | 229 |
| JM Jamaica | #8 | 33,574 | 11K rec. | — | — | Reid | 59 |
| IT Italy | #43 | 19,846 | 22K rec. | — | 2 | Reed | 48 |
| DE Germany | #628 | 14,305 | 15K rec. | — | 1 | Reed | 107 |
| RU Russia | — | 9,617 | 11K rec. | — | — | Reed | 31 |
| IE Ireland | #73 | 8,599 | 8.7K rec. | — | — | Reed | 101 |
| EG Egypt | #368 | 7,683 | 8K rec. | — | — | Reed | 28 |
| NZ New Zealand | #45 | 7,573 | 10K rec. | — | 19 | Reid | 126 |
| SG Singapore | #79 | 6,066 | 9K rec. | — | — | Reed | 34 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English239K84%
- Spanish9.2K3%
- 5.9K2%
- French3.8K1%
- German2.5K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 238,701 | 84% |
| Spanish | 9,165 | 3% |
| 5,891 | 2% | |
| French | 3,810 | 1% |
| German | 2,506 | 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●
Read 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 OE rēad 'red' (complexion or hair); first attested Leofwine se Reade 1016–20 OEByn.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, To look at and interpret letters or other information that is written.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., ke = ge, kele; gel, léi
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
American, Scottish, and English: transferred use of the English surname. In most cases, this originated as a nickname for someone with red hair or a ruddy complexion (from Old English r ad red; cf. REID ). In other cases, it may have arisen as a local name, from Old English hr od reeds or r od cleared land.
as a word
In Estonian, nominative plural of rida
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 |
|---|---|
| 1914 | 6 |
| 1915 | 7 |
| 1918 | 7 |
| 1924 | 6 |
| 1926 | 5 |
| 1929 | 5 |
| 1935 | 5 |
| 1936 | 8 |
| 1938 | 5 |
| 1943 | 7 |
| 1945 | 6 |
| 1947 | 7 |
| 1948 | 8 |
| 1949 | 14 |
| 1950 | 6 |
| 1952 | 5 |
| 1953 | 8 |
| 1954 | 10 |
| 1955 | 7 |
| 1957 | 7 |
| 1961 | 5 |
| 1963 | 6 |
| 1966 | 6 |
| 1968 | 5 |
| 1969 | 5 |
| 1973 | 5 |
| 1975 | 7 |
| 1979 | 7 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1984 | 7 |
| 1986 | 5 |
| 1987 | 5 |
| 1989 | 7 |
| 1990 | 5 |
| 1991 | 5 |
| 1992 | 7 |
| 1994 | 5 |
| 1996 | 6 |
| 1997 | 8 |
| 1998 | 10 |
| 1999 | 7 |
| 2001 | 8 |
| 2002 | 5 |
| 2003 | 6 |
| 2006 | 6 |
| 2007 | 6 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2014 | 5 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 48 years between 1914–2014. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- George Readb. 1733USAmerican politician (1733-1798)
- Herbert Readb. 1893GBEnglish anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art (1893-1968)
- Leonard Readb. 1898USAmerican academic
- Norman Readb. 1931GBNew Zealand racewalker (1931-1994)
- Phil Readb. 1939GBBritish motorcycle racer (1939–2022)
- Piers Paul Readb. 1941GBBritish writer (born 1941)
- Mike Readb. 1947GBEnglish radio presenter and musician
- James Readb. 1953USAmerican actor
- Mark Readb. 1978GBBritish singer (born 1978)
- Mary Readb. 2005GBEnglish pirate
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 41 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 17K | #1,981 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,150 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 345 | #25,390 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 182 | #17,810 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 182 | #17,724 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 116 | #13,506 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 116 | #16,916 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 103 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 86 | #8,137 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 52 | #27,084 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 39 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 · 128 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Read?
- We estimate roughly 282 thousand people bear Read (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Read have the most bearers?
- Read is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled reed.
- How common is Read compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Read is the 25th most common surname of 1,169,970 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Read mean?
- Recorded meaning: (i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented…
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/readThe 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, “Read” — the 25th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.