Réad
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Réad is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 36th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Transferred use of the English surname, 202 which for the most part originated as a nickname for someone with red hair ora ruddy complexion (from Old English réad ‘red’; cf. )Reid).
- JMJamaica≈1 in 500as Reid(inferred from the name graph)
- GYGuyana1 in 1Kas Reid
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.2Kas Reed
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Réad itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #195 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 606 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 499 (inferred from the name graph)
277,030 named Reed, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Jamaica, est., as Reid
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Reed in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IT Italy and 2 more and Reid in CA Canada, JM Jamaica.
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)- Old Englishréad(measured from records)
- Old Englishhréod(measured from records)
Transferred use of the English surname, 202 which for the most part originated as a nickname for someone with red hair ora ruddy complexion (from Old English réad ‘red’; cf. )Reid). In other cases, it may have arisen as a local name, from Old English hréod ‘reeds’ or réod ‘cleared land’. Reanna @2 Modern coinage, apparently an altered form of the Welsh name Rhiannon influenced by the spelling of )Deanna. Variant: Reanne.
Cited for this meaning 5
- A concise dictionary of first names
- A dictionary of surnames
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Réad 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 | #36 | 277,030as Reed | 1 in 1.2K | 277K | Reed | 606 |
| GB United Kingdom | #25 | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 37K | Reed | 319 |
| EG Egypt | #674 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Reed | 32 |
| IT Italy | #49 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 2 | Reed | 51 |
| CA Canada | #21 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 17 | Reid | 298 |
| JM Jamaica | #18 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 499 | — | Reid | 62 |
| IE Ireland | #31 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Reed | 115 |
| GY Guyana | — | 726as Reid | 1 in 1K | 726 | — | 12 |
277,030 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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)Réad is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, thing
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.
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Réad mean, and where does it come from?
- Transferred use of the English surname, 202 which for the most part originated as a nickname for someone with red hair ora ruddy complexion (from Old English réad ‘red’; cf. )Reid). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and A dictionary of surnames and 3 other sources.
- Is Réad a male or female name?
- Réad is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Réad have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 277 thousand people named Reed, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Réad?
- In the United States, the national register counted 277,030 people named Reed in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Réad compared with other names?
- In the United States, Réad is the 36th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Réad?
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/r%C3%A9adThe 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, “Réad” — the 36th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.