Varley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Varley in southwestern England ('fern glade') or from Verly in northern France ('Virilius's settlement')
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈvɑɹɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Varley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 161K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 547K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 700K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 43 (measured from records)
- 1 in 161K (inferred from the name graph)
2,068 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Varleyin(measured from records)
- Verlyin(measured from records)
Person from Varley in southwestern England ('fern glade') or from Verly in northern France ('Virilius's settlement').
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Varley 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 | 2,068 | 1 in 161K | 2.1K | Varley | 18 |
| ES Spain | 30 | 1 in 1.7M | 30 | Varley | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 12 | 1 in 700K | 12 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 10 | 1 in 547K | 10 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 8 | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 4 | 1 in 1.5M | 4 | — | — |
2,068 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Varley is also recorded in 2 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 Farleigh; first attested Thomas de Varley 1316 FA (Suffolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, John Herbert US author
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 Varleyb. 1778GBBritish artist (1778–1842)
- Cromwell Fleetwood Varleyb. 1828GBBritish engineer and inventor (1828–1883)
- William Varleyb. 1880USAmerican rower (1880-1968)
- Frederick Varleyb. 1881CACanadian painter, member of the Canadian Group of Seven artists (1881-1969)
- Beatrice Varleyb. 1896GBactress (1896-1964)
- Eric Varleyb. 1932GBpolitician and Life peer (1932-2008)
- John Varleyb. 1947USAmerican science fiction author (1947–2025)
- Natalya Varleyb. 1947RUSoviet and Russian actress
- Lynn Varleyb. 1958USAmerican comic book colorist (born 1958)
- Susan Varleyb. 1961GBEnglish writer and illustrator
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 24 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.1K | #13,300 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.1K | #14,447 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2K | #14,094 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 30 | #64,415 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 30 | #62,916 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 12 | #53,184 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 10 | #55,020 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 8 | #44,778 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4 | #73,742 |
| US United States | wru 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 Varley mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Varley in southwestern England ('fern glade') or from Verly in northern France ('Virilius's settlement'). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Varley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈvɑɹɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Varley have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.1 thousand people named Varley, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled varley.
- Where is Varley most common?
- Varley is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 161 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Varley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,068 people named Varley in 2010, about 1 in 161 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Varley?
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/varleyThe 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, “Varley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.