Spader
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Spader is a surname, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Nauru it is the 11th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Portuguese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: One who, or that which, spades; specifically, a digging machine.
- USUnited States1 in 547K◐
- NRNauru1 in 4.8K
- BRBrazil1 in 264K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.4K ●
- Sources
- 154 ●
- 1 in 264K ◐
across 4 countries
7.1K records
Official registry-verified
Brazil
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Späder in DE Germany and Spaeder in IE Ireland.
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●
One who, or that which, spades; specifically, a digging machine.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | — | 802△ | 2 rec. | 1 in 264K | 802 | — | 3 |
| US United States | — | 608 | 6K rec. | 1 in 547K | 624 | Spader | 154 |
| DE Germany | — | 267 | 253 rec. | — | listed | Späder | 23 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 231 | 234 rec. | — | — | Spader | 8 |
| CA Canada | — | 81 | 81 rec. | — | — | Spader | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | 74 | 74 rec. | — | — | Spader | 7 |
| ES Spain | — | 62 | 62 rec. | — | — | Spader | 1 |
| IT Italy | — | 59 | 59 rec. | — | — | Spader | 7 |
| NR Nauru | #11 | 41 | 85 rec. | — | — | Spader | 1 |
| IE Ireland | — | 33 | 37 rec. | — | — | Spaeder | 3 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 24 | 24 rec. | — | — | Spader | 1 |
| SG Singapore | — | 23 | 23 rec. | — | — | Spader | 1 |
Roughly 802 people in Brazil bear this name (about 1 in 264K). 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●
- English5.5K73%
- Portuguese1.1K14%
- French2794%
- German1532%
- Spanish1462%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 5,462 | 73% |
| Portuguese | 1,058 | 14% |
| French | 279 | 4% |
| German | 153 | 2% |
| Spanish | 146 | 2% |
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●
Spader is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, s. Spaten
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Swedish, spade, spades (one of the black suits in a deck of cards)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Bokmål, indefinite plural of spade
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, present of spada
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 |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1901 | 3 |
| 1921 | 4 |
| 1931 | 7 |
| 1941 | 2 |
| 1951 | 6 |
| 1961 | 8 |
| 1971 | 4 |
| 1981 | 8 |
| 1991 | 10 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 10 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●
- James Spaderb. 1960USAmerican actor
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 9 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 802 | #11,234 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 624 | #38,228 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 615 | #34,757 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 608 | #36,736 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 8 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 3 | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 · 18 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Spader?
- We estimate roughly 1.4 thousand people bear Spader (counting its spellings and scripts) across 4 countries in our records.
- In which country does Spader have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 802 people bear Spader in Brazil, more than in any other country in our records.
- How common is Spader compared with other names?
- In Nauru, Spader is the 11th most common surname of 1,048 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Spader mean?
- Recorded meaning: One who, or that which, spades; specifically, a digging machine.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/spaderThe 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, “Spader” — the 11th most common surname in Nauru. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.