Wass
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from the Norman personal name Wazo, probably based on a Germanic compound beginning with wad ‘to go’; (ii) from a medieval German nickname meaning ‘sharp’; (iii) from a Swedish nickname for a sold
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈwas/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Wass is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 1,713 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.
- SESweden1 in 9.3K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 21K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 44K
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)
- Record sources
- 262 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.3K (inferred from the name graph)
1,713 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Wass
- English:/ˈwas/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) from the Norman personal name Wazo, probably based on a Germanic compound beginning with wad ‘to go’; (ii) from a medieval German nickname meaning ‘sharp’; (iii) from a Swedish nickname for a soldier; (iv) an invented Swedish name based on vass ‘reed, marsh’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where the surname Wass is found
(measured from records)Wass 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 | 1,713 | 1 in 194K | 1.8K | Wass | 262 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 2.6K | Wass | 141 |
| SE Sweden | 1,098 | 1 in 9.3K | 1.1K | Wass | 49 |
| AU Australia | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Wass | 110 |
| CA Canada | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 121K | — | Wass | 58 |
| FI Finland | 270 | 1 in 21K | 270 | Wass | 8 |
| DK Denmark | 76 | 1 in 77K | 76 | — | — |
1,713 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)Wass 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, A surname from Norman.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gml, alternative spelling of was, third-person singular preterite of wēsen
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)- Ted Wassb. 1952USAmerican television director
- Julian Wassb. 1981USAmerican television writer, director and electronic musician
- Daniel Wassb. 1989DKDanish association football player
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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wass mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the Norman personal name Wazo, probably based on a Germanic compound beginning with wad ‘to go’; (ii) from a medieval German nickname meaning ‘sharp’; (iii) from a Swedish nickname for a sold… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Wass?
- In English /ˈwas/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Wass?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Wass, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wass. After it come United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Wass most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wass is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 9.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wass?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,713 people named Wass in 2010, about 1 in 194 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wass?
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/wassThe 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, “Wass” — ranked 15110th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.