Edwards
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Son of Edward’, from Old English Eadweard, literally ‘wealth guard’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɛdwədz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Edwards is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 51st most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 488(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 616
- AUAustralia≈1 in 701
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)
- #248 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 602 (measured from records)
- 1 in 92 (inferred from the name graph)
332,423 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘Son of Edward’, from Old English Eadweard, literally ‘wealth guard’
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)
Edwards 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 | #51 | 332,423 | 1 in 1K | 332K | Edwards | 602 |
| GB United Kingdom | #27 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 616 | — | Edwards | 364 |
| AU Australia | #32 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 701 | 1 | Edwards | 284 |
| CA Canada | #50 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Edwards | 260 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Edwards | 32 |
| JM Jamaica | #14 | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 488 | — | Edwards | 45 |
| GY Guyana | — | 2,797 | 1 in 268 | 2.8K | — | 14 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 1,104 | 1 in 92 | 1.1K | — | 12 |
| GD Grenada | — | 747 | 1 in 151 | 747 | — | 16 |
| DM Dominica | — | 339 | 1 in 219 | 339 | — | 9 |
332,423 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Edwards is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An English and Welsh surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Jonathan, US clergyman; Sir 0. M.,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Welsh scholar; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, Bibl
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Jonathan Edwardsb. 1703USChristian preacher, philosopher, and theologian (1703-1758)
- Blake Edwardsb. 1922USAmerican film director, screenwriter and producer (1922-2010)
- Robert G. Edwardsb. 1925GBEnglish physiologist and pioneer in reproductive medicine and in-vitro fertilisation
- Duncan Edwardsb. 1936GBEnglish footballer (1936-1958)
- Dennis Edwardsb. 1943USAmerican singer (1943-2018)
- Linda McMahonb. 1948USnot in their usual nameUnited States Secretary of Education since 2025
- Anthony Edwardsb. 1962USAmerican actor
- Shania Twainb. 1965CAnot in their usual nameCanadian country music singer and songwriter (born 1965)
- John Bel Edwardsb. 1966USAmerican politician and lawyer, Louisiana
- Perrie Edwardsb. 1993GBBritish 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 64 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 332K | #58 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 321K | #59 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 317K | #53 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 2.8K | #25 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 1.1K | #11 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 747 | #15 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 339 | #39 |
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)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Edwards mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Son of Edward’, from Old English Eadweard, literally ‘wealth guard’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Edwards have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 332 thousand people named Edwards, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled edwards.
- Where is Edwards most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Edwards is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 92 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Edwards?
- A machine transcription gives /ɛdwədz/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Edwards?
- In the United States, the national register counted 332,423 people named Edwards in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Edwards compared with other names?
- In the United States, Edwards is the 51st most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Edwards?
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/edwardsThe 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, “Edwards” — the 51st most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.