Stérling
surname · Latin script
Stérling is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: From Middle English sterling, sterlinge, sterlynge, starling, of uncertain origin.
- SGSingapore
- VAVatican City
- DEGermany
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. 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 States (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 24 (measured from records)
no count published
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Sterling in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IN India and 2 more.
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)- Middle Englishsterling(measured from records)
- Middle English rootsterling“starling”(measured from records)
- Middle Englishsterre“star”(measured from records)
- Baltictowns(measured from records)
From Middle English sterling, sterlinge, sterlynge, starling, of uncertain origin. Possibly from sterling (“starling”) (the bird), which at one time was stamped in quarters on the coin; or perhaps from Middle English sterre (“star”) + -ling (as in shilling), as some Norman coins presumably featured stars on them. For the UK currency gloss, the term is a contraction of esterling, referring to eastern merchants from Baltic towns who established a bullion weight standard for transactions. (Taylor and Palmer, 1968)
Cited for this meaning 4
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Wiktionary
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Nordic Names
Attested across 29 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Stérling counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 26K | Sterling | 24 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | listed | Sterling | 9 |
| IN India | — | 6 | Sterling | 2 |
| FI Finland | — | 42 | Sterling | 1 |
| SG Singapore | — | — | Sterling | 2 |
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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Stérling mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English sterling, sterlinge, sterlynge, starling, of uncertain origin. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- In which country does Stérling have the most bearers?
- Stérling is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled sterling.
What do you want to know about Stérling?
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/st%C3%A9rlingThe 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, “Stérling” — ranked 1333rd in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.