Johnstone
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Territorial name meaning ‘John’s place’ from Scots ton/toun ‘farm, settlement’; an Annandale name
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 23 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Johnstone is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.5K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.9K
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 Johnstone itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 377 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈12,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
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)Territorial name meaning ‘John’s place’ from Scots ton/toun ‘farm, settlement’; an Annandale name. Derived from land given by John in the 1170s.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where the surname Johnstone is found
(measured from records)Johnstone 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #527 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | listed | Johnstone | 254 |
| US United States | — | 7,313 | 1 in 45K | 7.3K | Johnstone | 377 |
| AU Australia | #379 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Johnstone | 190 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Johnstone | 172 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Johnstone | 65 |
| NZ New Zealand | #299 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Johnstone | 125 |
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)- Jimmy Johnstoneb. 1944GBScottish footballer (1944-2006)
- Davey Johnstoneb. 1951GBBritish guitarist
- Sam Johnstoneb. 1993GBEnglish association football player (born 1993)
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)36 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 23 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Johnstone come from?
- Territorial name meaning ‘John’s place’ from Scots ton/toun ‘farm, settlement’; an Annandale name. Derived from land given by John in the 1170s. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Johnstone?
- Mondonomo estimates about 12 thousand people named Johnstone in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled johnstone. After it come United States, Australia, Canada and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- What does the name Johnstone mean?
- Recorded meaning: Territorial name meaning ‘John’s place’ from Scots ton/toun ‘farm, settlement’; an Annandale name.
- How common is the name Johnstone?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,313 people named Johnstone in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Johnstone compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Johnstone is the 527th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Johnstone?
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/johnstoneThe 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, “Johnstone” — the 527th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.