Curtis
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for a refined/courteous person, or ironically a boorish person; or for a short person/one who wore short stockings
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɝtɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Curtis is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.8K
- CACanada≈1 in 1.8K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #671 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 593 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈840,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
from a medieval nickname for a refined/courteous person, or ironically a boorish person; or for a short person/one who wore short stockings.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Curtis 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈840,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Curtis | 30 |
| US United States | #262 | 159,667 | 1 in 2.1K | 159K | Curtis | 593 |
| GB United Kingdom | #386 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 7 | Curtis | 291 |
| CA Canada | #294 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 6 | Curtis | 256 |
| IT Italy | #639 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Curtis | 57 |
| SG Singapore | #222 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Curtis | 27 |
| IE Ireland | #210 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Curtis | 94 |
| NZ New Zealand | #288 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 10 | Curtis | 120 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Curtis 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.
Transferred use of the surname, which originated in the Middle Ages as a nickname for someone who was ‘cour- _ teous’ (Old French curteis). At an early date, however, it came to be associated with Middle English curt ‘short’ + hose ‘leggings’; compare Courtney.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, An English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a refined or courtly person.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, forma latinizada de Curti ou de Corti
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In English, from OFr corteis/courtois 'courteous'; first attested Curteis de Capella 1130 P (Wa)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Courteous
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Curtis LeMayb. 1906USAmerican general and politician (1906–1990)
- Peter Lamontb. 1929GBnot in their usual nameart director (1929-2020)
- Curtis Callanb. 1942USAmerican physicist
- Curtis Hansonb. 1945USAmerican filmmaker (1945–2016)
- Curtis Armstrongb. 1953USAmerican actor, voice actor, and singer (born 1953)
- Curtis Scaparrottib. 1956USUnited States Army General
- Curtis T. McMullenb. 1958USAmerican mathematician and Fields medallist
- Tuc Watkinsb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- 50 Centb. 1975USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper and actor (born 1975)
- Curtis Jonesb. 2001GBEnglish association football player (born 2001)
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 82 sources across 44 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 159K | #350 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 401 | #350 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 232 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 31 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2016 | 10 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 7 | #432 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 6 | #691 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2000 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2022 | 3 | #414 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Curtis mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for a refined/courteous person, or ironically a boorish person; or for a short person/one who wore short stockings. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Curtis a male or female name?
- Curtis is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Curtis?
- In the United States, the national register counted 159,667 people named Curtis in 2020, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Curtis compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Curtis is the 210th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Curtis have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 843 thousand people named Curtis in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled curtis.
- How do you pronounce Curtis?
- A machine transcription gives /kɝtɪs/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Curtis?
- In the etymology graph, Kurt and Kurtis are forms of the same name in other languages; Curt is a recorded short or pet form.
What do you want to know about Curtis?
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/curtisThe 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, “Curtis” — the 210th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.