Wakeman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 'Watchman', from Middle English wake 'watch, vigil' + man
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/wejkmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wakeman is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
'Watchman', from Middle English wake 'watch, vigil' + man.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Wakeman is also recorded in 3 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 ME wake ‘watch, vigil’ + man ‘watchman’; first attested William Wakeman 1200 Oseney (O).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from ME wake watch, vigil (OE wacw, see Wakefield) + Waintraub see Weintraub 648 Wall Wakenshaw man man (OE mann). This was the title of the mayor of Ripon until the i6th cent. Wakenshaw see Walkingshaw Dean i). Walasik see Valentine
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Old English; ‘a watchman or guard’.
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)
- Seth Wakemanb. 1811USU.S. Representative from New York (1811-1880)
- William Frederick Wakemanb. 1822IEIrish archaeologist (1822–1900)
- Abram Wakemanb. 1824USAmerican lawyer and politician (1824-1889)
- Lyons Wakemanb. 1843USGender-nonconforming individual who was assigned female at birth and fought in the American Civil War as a man
- Frederic Wakemanb. 1909USAmerican writer and director (1909-1998)
- Frederic Wakemanb. 1937USAmerican sinologist (1937–2006)
- Alan Wakemanb. 1947GBEnglish musician
- Oliver Wakemanb. 1972GBEnglish musician
- Adam Wakemanb. 1974GBBritish keyboardist and guitarist
- Jemma Wakemanb. 1983GBBritish singer
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 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.7K | #11,463 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.5K | #11,458 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,483 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.1K | #3,477 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 18 | #88,854 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 12 | #53,184 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #297,415 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #298,027 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Wakeman mean, and where does it come from?
- 'Watchman', from Middle English wake 'watch, vigil' + man. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Wakeman?
- A machine transcription gives /wejkmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wakeman have the most bearers?
- Wakeman is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Wakeman?
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/wakemanThe 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, “Wakeman”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.