Brownlie
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Topographic surname from Scots lee/lees ‘field(s)’ with a colour prefix; exact feature or field-boundary origin uncertain
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈbɹaʊnɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Brownlie is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 46K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 59K
- USUnited States1 in 733K
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.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 187 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 36K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Topographic surname from Scots lee/lees ‘field(s)’ with a colour prefix; exact feature or field-boundary origin uncertain.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Brownlie 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Brownlie | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Brownlie | 152 |
| AU Australia | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Brownlie | 98 |
| US United States | 454 | 1 in 733K | 519 | Brownlie | 187 |
| BY Belarus | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Brownlie | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Brownlie | 45 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- John Brownlieb. 1857GBBritish hymnist
- Alexander Brownlie Dochartyb. 1862GBBritish painter (1862–1940)
- James Thomas Brownlieb. 1865British trade unionist and politician
- Garth Brownlieb. 1920NZNew Zealand botanist (1920-1986)
- Ian Brownlieb. 1932GBBritish barrister and professor (1932-2010)
- John Brownlieb. 1952GBScottish footballer and manager (born 1952)
- Royce Brownlieb. 1980AUAustralian soccer player
- Dean Brownlieb. 1984AUcricketer
- Emma Brownlieb. 1993GBBritish association football player (born 1993)
- Darren Brownlieb. 1994GBBritish association football player (born 1994)
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 519 | #44,544 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 501 | #41,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 454 | #46,811 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Brownlie mean, and where does it come from?
- Topographic surname from Scots lee/lees ‘field(s)’ with a colour prefix; exact feature or field-boundary origin uncertain. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Brownlie?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈbɹaʊnɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Brownlie have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 thousand people named Brownlie in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled brownlie.
- How common is the name Brownlie?
- In the United States, the national register counted 454 people named Brownlie in 2010, about 1 in 733 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Brownlie?
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/brownlieThe 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, “Brownlie”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.