Littlewood
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Littlewood, Yorkshire, meaning “small wood”
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫɪtəɫˌwʊd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Littlewood is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 43K
- USUnited States1 in 510K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 213 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,900 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Person from Littlewood, Yorkshire, meaning “small wood”.
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)
Littlewood 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | listed | Littlewood | 174 |
| US United States | 652 | 1 in 510K | 669 | Littlewood | 213 |
| AU Australia | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Littlewood | 98 |
| CA Canada | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 169K | — | Littlewood | 59 |
| BR Brazil | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 2M | — | Littlewood | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Littlewood | 42 |
| DO Dominican Republic | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 274K | — | Littlewood | 1 |
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: the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Littlewood 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, ‘dweller by the little wood’; first attested Geoffrey de Litelwode 1275 Wak (Y)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
habitational name from any of several minor places so called, mostly in West Yorkshire, Littlewood in Wooldale being a well-recorded instance. They are named with Old English lytel ‘small’ -lwudu ‘wood’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, baker or miller, from liszt flour, perhaps also a nickname for a white-haired person or someone with a very pale com¬ plexion. 2. Hungarian spelling of List. from any of several minor places in W Yorks., Littlewood in Wooldale being a well-recorded instance. They are named with OE lytel small + wudu Wood.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, from any of several minor places in W Yorks., Littlewood in Wooldale being a well-recorded instance. They are named with OE lytel small + wudu Wood. Var.: Liversedge. Livery see Leveridge
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A surname from Old English.
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)
- John Edensor Littlewoodb. 1885GBEnglish mathematician (1885–1977)
- Dudley E. Littlewoodb. 1903GBBritish mathematician (1903–1979)
- Stewart Littlewoodb. 1905GBEnglish footballer (1905-1977)
- Joan Littlewoodb. 1914GBBritish theatre director and actress (1914-2002)
- Harry Littlewoodb. 1921GBBritish actor (1921-2003)
- Chic Littlewoodb. 1930NZNew Zealand entertainer and actor (1930-2015)
- John Littlewoodb. 1931GBBritish chess player
- Norman Littlewoodb. 1933GBEnglish chess player
- Peter Littlewoodb. 1955GBBritish physicist
- Dominic Littlewoodb. 1965GBBritish TV presenter
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 18 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 669 | #36,053 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 652 | #34,668 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 545 | #38,198 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Littlewood mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Littlewood, Yorkshire, meaning “small wood”. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Littlewood?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɪtəɫˌwʊd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Littlewood have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.9 thousand people named Littlewood in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled littlewood.
- How common is the name Littlewood?
- In the United States, the national register counted 652 people named Littlewood in 2010, about 1 in 510 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Littlewood?
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/littlewoodThe 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, “Littlewood”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.