Mason
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Trade name for a stonemason; in 13th-century Latin documents often rendered as cementarius
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/meɪsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mason is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the United Kingdom it is the 87th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.5K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.5K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #538 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 575 (measured from records)
- 1 in 608 (inferred from the name graph)
≈630,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Trade name for a stonemason; in 13th-century Latin documents often rendered as cementarius.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mason 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈630,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Mason | 37 |
| US United States | #149 | 160,213 | 1 in 2.1K | 267K | Mason | 575 |
| GB United Kingdom | #87 | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 806 | Mason | 330 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Mason | 24 |
| CA Canada | #137 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 65 | Mason | 244 |
| AU Australia | #118 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 512 | Mason | 257 |
| NZ New Zealand | #87 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 82 | Mason | 142 |
| GD Grenada | — | 186 | 1 in 608 | 186 | — | 5 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 150 | 1 in 676 | 150 | — | 4 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Mason is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Especially U.S.: transferred use of the surname, which originated in the early Middle Ages as an occupational name for a worker in stone, Old French macon (of Germanic origin, connected with Old English macian ‘to make’).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
occupational name for a stonemason. Middle English, Old French mas(s)on. Compare Machen. Stonemasonry was a hugely important craft in the Middle Ages.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A bricklayer, one whose occupation is to build with stone or brick
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, stonemason, from Old French.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Italian, forma dialetal set., redução de Masoni
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- George Masonb. 1725USAmerican delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention (1725-1792)
- James Murray Masonb. 1798USAmerican politician (1798-1871)
- John Y. Masonb. 1799USAmerican politician (1799-1859)
- James Masonb. 1909GBBritish actor (1909–1984)
- Jackie Masonb. 1928USAmerican comedian (1928-2021)
- Marsha Masonb. 1942USAmerican actress (born 1942)
- Nick Masonb. 1944GBEnglish drummer
- Sandra Masonb. 1949BB1st president of Barbados
- Anthony Masonb. 1966USAmerican basketball player (1966-2015)
- Mercedes Masonb. 1982SESwedish-American actress (born 1982)
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 101 sources across 52 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 160K | #166 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 155K | #149 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 154K | #171 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 186 | #75 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 150 | #122 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
- 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)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Mason mean, and where does it come from?
- Trade name for a stonemason; in 13th-century Latin documents often rendered as cementarius. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- In which country does Mason have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 632 thousand people named Mason in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mason.
- Where is Mason most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mason is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 608 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Mason?
- In the United States, the national register counted 160,213 people named Mason in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Mason compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Mason is the 87th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Mason?
- A machine transcription gives /meɪsən/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Mason?
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/masonThe 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, “Mason” — the 87th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.