Rob
given name · Latin script
Meaning: To steal from, especially using force or violence
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹɒb/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rob is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 24th most common given name.
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.3K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈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.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 557 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈33,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
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)
To steal from, especially using force or violence.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rob 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 | #331 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | 195 | Rob | 342 |
| US United States | #530 | 30,144 | 1 in 11K | 30K | Rob | 557 |
| CA Canada | #240 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 1 | Rob | 301 |
| AU Australia | #295 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 1 | Rob | 250 |
| NL Netherlands | #24 | 13,792 | 1 in 1.3K | 14K | Rob | 188 |
| NZ New Zealand | #173 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Rob | 145 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Rob 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 German, Slavic stem from robiti 'work' or rob 'servant'; cf. robot
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, männl. Vom., englische und nieder ländische Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Short form of jRobert.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Scottish Gaelic, a diminutive of the male given name Raibeart, equivalent to English Rob
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, seal, any member of the family Phocidae
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Rob Reinerb. 1947USAmerican filmmaker and actor (1947–2025)
- Rob Rensenbrinkb. 1947NLDutch association football player
- Rob Paulsenb. 1956USAmerican voice actor and voice director
- Rob Marshallb. 1960USAmerican film and theatre director and producer
- Rob Loweb. 1964USAmerican actor (born 1964)
- Rob Zombieb. 1965USAmerican rock singer and filmmaker
- Rob Liefeldb. 1967USAmerican comic book creator
- Rob Riggleb. 1970USAmerican actor
- Rob Morganb. 1973USAmerican actor
- Rob Jettenb. 1987NLprime minister of the Netherlands
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 65 sources across 32 countries.
Reference works 4
- 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
- What are other forms of the name Rob?
- In the etymology graph, Roberto, Robin and Bob are forms of the same name in other languages; Bobby and Bobbie are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Robert.
- What does the name Rob mean, and where does it come from?
- To steal from, especially using force or violence. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Rob a male or female name?
- Rob is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Rob?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹɒb/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rob have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 33 thousand people named Rob in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rob.
- Where is Rob most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rob is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Rob?
- In the United States, the national register counted 30,144 people named Rob in 2020, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Rob compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Rob is the 331st most common given name of 404,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rob?
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/robThe 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, “Rob” — the 331st most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.