Fòster
surname · Latin script
Fòster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Gabon it is the 79th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle English foster, from Old English fōstor (“food, sustenance”), from Proto-West Germanic *fōstr, from Proto-Germanic *fōstrą (“nourishment, food”).
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 922(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 1.5K
- GYGuyana1 in 5.6K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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
- 203 (measured from records)
- 1 in 922 (inferred from the name graph)
227,764 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Foster in US United States, BR Brazil, AR Argentina and 2 more.
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 Englishfoster(measured from records)
- Old Englishfōstor“food“food, sustenance”(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*fōstr(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*fōstrą“nourishment“nourishment, food”(measured from records)
From Middle English foster, from Old English fōstor (“food, sustenance”), from Proto-West Germanic *fōstr, from Proto-Germanic *fōstrą (“nourishment, food”). Cognate with Middle Dutch voester (“nursemaid”), Middle Low German vôster (“food”), Old Norse fóstr (“nurturing, education, alimony, child support”), Danish foster (“fetus”), Swedish foster (“fetus”).
Cited for this meaning 4
- A concise dictionary of first names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Fòster is found
(measured from records)Fòster 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 | — | 227,764 | 1 in 1.5K | 228K | Foster | 203 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,576 | 1 in 82K | 2.6K | Foster | 93 |
| ES Spain | — | 493 | 1 in 101K | 493 | Foster | 34 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 440 | 1 in 12K | 440 | — | 37 |
| AR Argentina | — | 223 | 1 in 204K | 223 | Foster | 50 |
| NO Norway | — | 152 | 1 in 36K | 152 | — | 3 |
| GY Guyana | — | 134 | 1 in 5.6K | 134 | — | — |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 110 | 1 in 922 | 110 | — | — |
| GA Gabon | #79 | — | — | 2 | Foster | 12 |
227,764 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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 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 Fòster mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English foster, from Old English fōstor (“food, sustenance”), from Proto-West Germanic *fōstr, from Proto-Germanic *fōstrą (“nourishment, food”). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 2 other sources.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Fòster?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 228 thousand people named Fòster, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled foster. After it come Brazil, Spain, Costa Rica and Argentina; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Fòster most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fòster is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 922 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Fòster?
- In the United States, the national register counted 227,764 people named Fòster in 2010, about 1 in 1.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Fòster compared with other names?
- In Gabon, Fòster is the 79th most common surname of 6,042 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fòster?
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/f%C3%B2sterThe 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, “Fòster” — the 79th most common surname in Gabon. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.