Bayes

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Son of Bay

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/bejz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Bayes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 73K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 165K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 61K

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)

2,019 people, 2010

Sources
268 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 61K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

Locally spelled Bayés in ES Spain.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Son of Bay.

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)

Bayes 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.

Where Bayes is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2,0191 in 165K2.1KBayes268
GB United Kingdom≈900 est.≈1 in 73K—Bayes138
ES Spain3441 in 145K344Bayés18
PE Peru≈340 est.≈1 in 93K—Bayes16
CA Canada≈340 est.≈1 in 110K—Bayes62
AU Australia≈220 est.≈1 in 116K—Bayes58
NZ New Zealand≈81 est.≈1 in 61K—Bayes33

2,019 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). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Bayes is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Spain, United States, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Bayés, Bayès, Bäÿes

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Spain

    Also written Bayés, Bayès

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Bayés, Bayès

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Bayés

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom

    Also written Bayés

  • Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Bayés

40 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Bayes 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.

  • In French, second-person singular present indicative/subjunctive of bayer

    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)

16001700180019002000Joshua Bayes, b. 1671Thomas Bayes, b. 1702Alfred Walter Bayes, b. 1832Walter Bayes, b. 1869Gilbert Bayes, b. 1872Ronald H. Bayes, b. 1932Richie Bayes, b. 1948Sharon Bayes, b. 1965Ashley Bayes, b. 1972Andrew Bayes, b. 1978

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)

FormalDear Bayes,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 15 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Bayes
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.1K#13,319
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102K#14,713
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.9K#15,248
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—344#10,778
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—344#10,770
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Bayes mean, and where does it come from?
Son of Bay. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Bayes?
A machine transcription gives /bejz/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Bayes have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 2.0 thousand people named Bayes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bayes.
How common is the name Bayes?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,019 people named Bayes in 2010, about 1 in 165 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Bayes?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bayes

The 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, “Bayes”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bayes parses inside a full name →