Backer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: One who, or that which, backs; especially one who backs an entrant in a contest, or who supports an enterprise by funding it
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Backer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 5th most common surname.
- NLNetherlands1 in 313as Bakker(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 463as Becker
- USUnited States1 in 793as Baker
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 Backer itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #750 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 529 (measured from records)
- 1 in 313 (inferred from the name graph)
419,586 named Baker, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands, as Bakker
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Becker in US United States, DE Germany, LU Luxembourg and 1 more and Bakker in NL Netherlands, ID Indonesia.
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)
One who, or that which, backs; especially one who backs an entrant in a contest, or who supports an enterprise by funding it.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Backer 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 | #281 | 419,586as Baker | 1 in 793 | 420K | Becker | 529 |
| DE Germany | #9 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 463 | listed | Becker | 281 |
| NL Netherlands | #5 | 55,273as Bakker | 1 in 313 | 55K | Bakker | 195 |
| BR Brazil | — | 41,006as Becker | 1 in 5.2K | 41K | — | 5 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Bakker | 54 |
| JM Jamaica | #69 | ≈910 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Becker | 8 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 1K | 2.6K | Becker | 44 |
419,586 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling baker. 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); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es). 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)
Backer 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.
A botanical plant name author abbreviation for Dutch botanist Cornelis Andries Backer (1874-1963). For the surname, see below.
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)
- Jacob Adriaensz. Backerb. 1608NLDutch Golden Age painter (1608-1651)
- Adriaen Backerb. 1635NLpainter from the Northern Netherlands (1635-1684)
- Catharina Backerb. 1689NLpainter from the Northern Netherlands (1689–1766)
- Harriet Backerb. 1845NONorwegian painter (1845-1932)
- Cornelis Andries Backerb. 1874NLDutch botanist (1874–1963)
- Lars Backerb. 1892NONorwegian architect (1892–1930)
- Terry Backerb. 1954USAmerican politician (1954-2015)
- Brian Backerb. 1956USAmerican actor
- Marijn Backerb. 1956NLDutch writer
- Kristiane Backerb. 1965DEGerman television journalist
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 30 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.4K | #9,615 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.3K | #9,189 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.2K | #9,801 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #6,464 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 435 | #4,546 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Backer mean, and where does it come from?
- One who, or that which, backs; especially one who backs an entrant in a contest, or who supports an enterprise by funding it. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Backer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 420 thousand people named Baker, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Backer most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Backer itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Netherlands's: the national register counts about 1 in 313 people named Bakker.
- How common is the name Backer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 419,586 people named Baker in 2010, about 1 in 793 residents.
- How common is Backer compared with other names?
- In the United States, Backer is the 281st most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Backer?
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/backerThe 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, “Backer” — the 281st most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.