Stephens
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Stephens is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 7th most common given name. Recorded meaning: A surname transferred from the given name.
- RORomania1 in 69as Ştefan(measured from records)
- BGBulgaria1 in 137as Стефан
- SESweden1 in 140as Stefan
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 Stephens itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #17 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 690 (measured from records)
- 1 in 69 (inferred from the name graph)
972,808 named Steven, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Romania, as Ştefan
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
10 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Stefan in DE Germany, RO Romania, BG Bulgaria and 2 more, Stephen in GB United Kingdom, NG Nigeria and Steven in US United States.
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)
A surname transferred from the given name.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Stephens 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #7 | 972,808as Steven | 1 in 342 | 972K | Steven | 690 |
| DE Germany | #3 | ≈540,000 est. | ≈1 in 148 | listed | Stefan | 354 |
| NG Nigeria | #63 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 556 | — | Stephen | 155 |
| GB United Kingdom | #5 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 175 | 28K | Stephen | 438 |
| RO Romania | #144 | 309,900as Ştefan | 1 in 69 | 310K | Stefan | 103 |
| SE Sweden | #23 | 72,629as Stefan | 1 in 140 | 73K | Stefan | 188 |
| AT Austria | #3 | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 147 | 31K | Stefan | 210 |
| BG Bulgaria | #8 | 50,950as Стефан | 1 in 137 | 51K | Stefan | 160 |
972,808 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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); DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; NSI — most common given names (population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Stephens is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Son of Stephen.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Irish, This name has several origins: viz. Norman Fitzstephen; Irish Mac Gialla Stiofáin (devotee of St. Stephen); and planter English. Apart from Dublin it is mainly found in Mayo, where it is MacStephen, akin to Jordan. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Harvey Stephensb. 1901USAmerican actor (1901-1986)
- Joseph Stephensb. 1901USAmerican musician
- Helen Stephensb. 1918USathletics competitor (1918–1994)
- Robert Stephensb. 1931GBEnglish actor (1931–1995)
- Nancy Stephensb. 1949USAmerican actress and songwriter
- Marc Warrenb. 1967GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actor
- Toby Stephensb. 1969GBBritish actor
- John Legendb. 1978USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer-songwriter
- Ezekiel Jacksonb. 1978GYnot in their usual nameGuyanese professional wrestler and bodybuilder
- Sloane Stephensb. 1993USUS American tennis player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 47 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 145K | #190 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 139K | #197 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 139K | #181 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 28K | #246 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 299 | #27,069 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 47 | #13,318 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 41 | #27,069 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1953 | 22 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1954 | 14 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1964 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1958 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1951 | 11 | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Stephens mean, and where does it come from?
- A surname transferred from the given name. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Stephens have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 973 thousand people named Steven, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Stephens most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Stephens itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Romania's: the national register counts about 1 in 69 people named Ştefan.
- How common is the name Stephens?
- In the United States, the national register counted 972,808 people named Steven in 2020, about 1 in 342 residents.
- How common is Stephens compared with other names?
- In the United States, Stephens is the 7th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Stephens?
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/stephensThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Stephens” — the 7th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.