Bĕst
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bĕst 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: 37,923 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Recorded meaning: From Middle English beste, best, from Old English betst, betest, from Proto-Germanic *batistaz.
- GDGrenada1 in 1.9K(measured from records)
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 4.4K
- GYGuyana1 in 6.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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)
- Record sources
- 76 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
37,923 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Best in US United States, DZ Algeria, PS Palestine.
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)- Middle Englishbeste(measured from records)
- Old Englishbetst(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*batistaz(measured from records)
From Middle English beste, best, from Old English betst, betest, from Proto-Germanic *batistaz.
Cited for this meaning 5
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where the surname Bĕst is found
(measured from records)Bĕst 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 | — | 37,923 | 1 in 8.8K | 38K | Best | 76 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 504 | 1 in 34K | 504 | — | 3 |
| IN India | — | 379 | 1 in 3.5M | 379 | — | 5 |
| DZ Algeria | #925 | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 244K | — | Best | 9 |
| GY Guyana | — | 122 | 1 in 6.1K | 122 | — | — |
| GD Grenada | — | 60 | 1 in 1.9K | 60 | — | — |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 23 | 1 in 4.4K | 23 | — | — |
| PS Palestine | #658 | — | — | — | Best | 5 |
37,923 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bĕst mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English beste, best, from Old English betst, betest, from Proto-Germanic *batistaz. Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
- Is Bĕst a male or female name?
- Bĕst 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.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Bĕst?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Bĕst, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled best. After it come Netherlands, India, Algeria and Guyana; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Bĕst most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bĕst is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 1.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bĕst?
- In the United States, the national register counted 37,923 people named Bĕst in 2010, about 1 in 8.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Bĕst compared with other names?
- In Palestine, Bĕst is the 658th most common surname of 17,903 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bĕst?
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/b%C4%95stThe 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, “Bĕst” — ranked 855th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.