Hairston
surname · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from a place named Harestone or Harestane
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈhaɪɹstən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hairston is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Benin than in any other country, where it is the 7th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 21K(measured from records)
- BJBenin≈1 in 612
- SCSeychelles≈1 in 2K
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.
- Benin (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 379 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 612 (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Benin, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
habitational name from a place named Harestone or Harestane. The surname has died out in Scotland.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hairston 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BJ Benin | #7 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 612 | — | Hairston | 1 |
| US United States | — | 16,090 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Hairston | 379 |
| CN China | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 98K | — | Hairston | 3 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Hairston | 1 |
| KP North Korea | #925 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Hairston | 1 |
| NC New Caledonia | #401 | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Hairston | 1 |
| SC Seychelles | #2 | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Hairston | 2 |
| MC Monaco | #587 | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Hairston | 1 |
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. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jester Hairstonb. 1901USAmerican composer, songwriter, arranger, choral conductor, and actor (1901-2000)
- Happy Hairstonb. 1942USbasketball player (1942-2001)
- Al Hairstonb. 1945USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Jerry Hairston, Sr.b. 1952USformer Major League Baseball player
- Andrea Hairstonb. 1952USAmerican writer
- Jerry Hairstonb. 1976USbaseball player
- Scott Hairstonb. 1980USAmerican baseball player
- Malik Hairstonb. 1987USAmerican basketball player (born 1987)
- P. J. Hairstonb. 1992USAmerican basketball player (born 1992)
- Marlon Hairstonb. 1994USAmerican soccer player
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 13 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,260 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,262 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,242 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Hairston come from?
- habitational name from a place named Harestone or Harestane. The surname has died out in Scotland. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Hairston?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈhaɪɹstən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Hairston mean?
- Recorded meaning: habitational name from a place named Harestone or Harestane.
- In which country does Hairston have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Hairston in Benin, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hairston.
- How common is the name Hairston?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,090 people named Hairston in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Hairston compared with other names?
- In Benin, Hairston is the 7th most common surname of 5,339 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hairston?
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/hairstonThe 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, “Hairston” — the 7th most common surname in Benin. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.