Knîght
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Knîght is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 52nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.5K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 1.6K
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)
- #602 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 558 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
136,713 people, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Knight in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 5 more.
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 Englishknight(measured from records)
- Old Englishcniht“boy; servant“boy; servant, knight”(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*kneht(measured from records)
From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht.
Cited for this meaning 6
- A dictionary of surnames
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
Attested across 31 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Knîght 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 | #180 | 136,713 | 1 in 2.4K | 137K | Knight | 558 |
| GB United Kingdom | #89 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 12 | Knight | 326 |
| AU Australia | #110 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 105 | Knight | 258 |
| CA Canada | #188 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | 10 | Knight | 248 |
| IT Italy | #372 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | 6 | Knight | 47 |
| IE Ireland | #139 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Knight | 69 |
| NZ New Zealand | #123 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 11 | Knight | 146 |
| JM Jamaica | #52 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Knight | 23 |
136,713 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Knîght mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy; servant, knight”), from Proto-West Germanic *kneht. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 4 other sources.
- Is Knîght a male or female name?
- Knîght 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.
- In which country does Knîght have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 137 thousand people named Knîght, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled knight.
- How common is the name Knîght?
- In the United States, the national register counted 136,713 people named Knîght in 2010, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Knîght compared with other names?
- In the United States, Knîght is the 180th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Knîght?
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/kn%C3%AEghtThe 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, “Knîght” — the 180th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.