Špear
surname · Latin script
Špear is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-.
- USUnited States1 in 25K(measured from records)
- HRCroatia≈1 in 404K
- DKDenmark1 in 2M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 14 (measured from records)
- 1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
13,284 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Spear in US United States.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishspere(measured from records)
- Old Englishspere(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*speru(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*speru(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*sperH-(measured from records)
From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-. Cognates See also West Frisian spear, Dutch speer, German Speer, Old Norse spjǫr, *sparrô, Middle Dutch sparre (“rafter”), Old Norse sparri (“spar, rafter”), sperra (“rafter, beam”); also Latin sparus (“short spear”), Albanian ferrë (“thorn, thornbush”).
Sources 5
- A dictionary of surnames
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Špear counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 13,284 | 1 in 25K | 13K | SpEaR | 14 |
| ES Spain | 16 | 1 in 3.1M | 16 | — | 1 |
| HR Croatia | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 404K | — | Špear | 3 |
| DK Denmark | 3 | 1 in 2M | 3 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 3 | 1 in 3.9M | 3 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 3 | 1 in 2.8M | 3 | — | — |
13,284 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling spear. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Špear mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English spere, sperre, spear, from Old English spere, from Proto-West Germanic *speru, from Proto-Germanic *speru, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Špear have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Špear, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled SpEaR.
- Where is Špear most common?
- Špear is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 25 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Špear?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,284 people named Špear in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Špear?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C5%A1pearThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Špear”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.