Rea

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ɹɪə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Rea is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ITItaly≈1 in 9K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 15K
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 19K

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)

14,819 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
409 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ReaLatin(measured from records)
ΡέαGreek(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)

(i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rea 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.

Where Rea is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—14,8191 in 22K15KRea409
EC Ecuador—11,3811 in 1.5K11KRea27
IT Italy—≈7,000 est.≈1 in 9K24Rea58
PH Philippines—≈5,700 est.≈1 in 19K53KRea96
GB United Kingdom—≈4,400 est.≈1 in 15K47Rea190
AR Argentina—4,0701 in 11K4.1K—1
IE Ireland#901≈490 est.≈1 in 10K—Rea67
NZ New Zealand—≈390 est.≈1 in 13K11Rea71

14,819 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; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); INEC — civil registry names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Rea is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Argentina, United States, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Réa, Reà, Reä, Reá, ́rea

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Réa

  • Croatian surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Croatia, Bulgaria, United Kingdom

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Reea, Reá, Реа, Réa

  • Albanian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Albania

    Also written Rêà, Řeå, Reã

  • Italian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Philippines, United Kingdom

    Also written Réà, Reä, Rèá, Rêä, Réa

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Rëâ

68 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Rea 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.

  • In English, local surname from residence near a stream; from OE ēa 'water, stream'; first attested Ralph de la Reye 1279 RH (O)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In Swedish, Rea (Rhea) är i den grekiska mytologin dotter till Uranos och Gaia, syster och maka till titanen Kronos samt moder till bl.a. Zeus. Namnets betydelse är oviss. I den finlands svenska almanackan 8 april.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In Italian, oriundo de Rea; nome ligado a senda, viela ou bosque virgem

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In German, ) Rhea: weibl. Vom., der au f eine

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • Corriente, arroyo

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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)

1850190019502000Samuel Rea, b. 1855Walter Rea, 1st Baron Rea, b. 1873Marvel Rea, b. 1901Peggy Rea, b. 1921Stephen Rea, b. 1946Chris Rea, b. 1951Raffaella Rea, b. 1982Jonathan Rea, b. 1987Colin Rea, b. 1990Glen Rea, b. 1994

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)

FormalDear Ms Rea,
InformalHi Rea,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 81 sources across 40 countries.

Official registers attesting Rea
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201015K#2,443
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202014K#2,437
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200014K#2,423
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202411K#384
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—4.1K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2024110—

Reference works 7

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

How do you pronounce Rea?
A machine transcription gives /ɹɪə/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Rea have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Rea, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rea.
Where is Rea most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rea is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What does the name Rea mean, and where does it come from?
(i) a different form of Rye; (ii) a shortened form of McRea Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How common is the name Rea?
In the United States, the national register counted 14,819 people named Rea in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
How common is Rea compared with other names?
In Ireland, Rea is the 901st most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rea?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rea

The 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, “Rea” — the 901st most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rea parses inside a full name →