Wayne
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Occupational name from Old English weegn ‘wagon’; ‘wagon-maker’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/weɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wayne is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 92nd most common given name.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 518(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 589
- CACanada≈1 in 687
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)
- #217 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 612 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 518 (inferred from the name graph)
213,032 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
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)
Occupational name from Old English weegn ‘wagon’; ‘wagon-maker’.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wayne 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 | #92 | 213,032 | 1 in 1.6K | 213K | Wayne | 612 |
| GB United Kingdom | #123 | ≈91,000 est. | ≈1 in 721 | 4.8K | Wayne | 326 |
| CA Canada | #90 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 687 | 3 | Wayne | 293 |
| KP North Korea | #67 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 576 | — | Wayne | 5 |
| AU Australia | #96 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 589 | 88 | Wayne | 286 |
| NZ New Zealand | #64 | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 518 | 10 | Wayne | 161 |
| IE Ireland | #78 | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 703 | — | Wayne | 119 |
213,032 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); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Wayne 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, Old English: wagon maker; popularized by actor John Wayne
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, A surname originating as an occupation.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
English Actor John Wayne Helped
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In enm, alternative form of wayn (“wagon”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, who cares
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)
- Mae Marshb. 1894USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1894-1968)
- David Wayneb. 1914USAmerican actor (1914–1995)
- Dick Van Dykeb. 1925USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and comedian (born 1925)
- John Wayne Gacyb. 1942USAmerican serial killer (1942–1994)
- Wayne Newtonb. 1942USAmerican singer and entertainer
- Rex Tillersonb. 1952USnot in their usual name69th United States Secretary of State
- Wayne Knightb. 1955USAmerican actor
- Ken Jenningsb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican game show contestant, host, and writer
- Wayne Bridgeb. 1980GBEnglish footballer (born 1980)
- Wayne Rooneyb. 1985GBEnglish footballer and manager
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 75 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 213K | #262 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 422 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 286 | #262 |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1986 | 88 | #85 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1985 | 49 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 14 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1998 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1992 | 5 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2017 | 4 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2017 | 4 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2017 | 4 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2013 | 4 | #590 |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Wayne mean, and where does it come from?
- Occupational name from Old English weegn ‘wagon’; ‘wagon-maker’. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Wayne a male or female name?
- Wayne 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.
- In which country does Wayne have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 213 thousand people named Wayne, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wayne.
- How do you pronounce Wayne?
- A machine transcription gives /weɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Wayne?
- In the United States, the national register counted 213,032 people named Wayne in 2020, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Wayne compared with other names?
- In the United States, Wayne is the 92nd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wayne?
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/wayneThe 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, “Wayne” — the 92nd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.