Cape

loc · Latin script

Meaning: ‘maker of capes and cloaks’, or a nickname for someone who habitually wore a cape or cloak

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

Cape is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States
  • AUAustralia
  • GBUnited Kingdom

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
257 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

‘maker of capes and cloaks’, or a nickname for someone who habitually wore a cape or cloak

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cape counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Cape is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—2.6KCape257
GB United Kingdom——Cape106
AU Australia——Cape42
CA Canada——Cape70
ZA South Africa——Cape28

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. 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Capé, Capè

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Capé

  • Arabic name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria

    Languages: Arabic, Maltese

    Also written Capé, Ćåpė, Câpê, Çàpé

  • Indonesian name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia

    Also written Capé

  • Italian name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, Vatican City

    Also written Capè, Capé

58 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(measured from records)

Cape 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 cāpe, ME cope ‘a long cloak or cape’; first attested Ailward, Walter Cape 1190 P (K), 1221 AssGl

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, A piece or point of land, extending beyond the adjacent coast into a sea or lake; a promontory; a headland.

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

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, a cape (sleeveless garment worn by women, which covers the shoulders and arms)

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

  • In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of capiō

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

  • In Albanian, indefinite dative/ablative singular of capë

    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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

175018001850190019502000Jonathan Cape, b. 1793William Timothy Cape, b. 1806Thomas Cape, b. 1868Jonathan Cape, b. 1879Jack Cape, b. 1911Roy Cape, b. 1942Yves Cape, b. 1960Joey Cape, b. 1966Anhel Cape, b. 1978

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(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Cape
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.6K#11,971
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#11,758
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.3K#12,861
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Cape mean, and where does it come from?
‘maker of capes and cloaks’, or a nickname for someone who habitually wore a cape or cloak Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Cape have the most bearers?
Cape is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled cape.

What do you want to know about Cape?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cape

The 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, “Cape”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cape parses inside a full name →