Adair
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Adair is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from the Scottish male personal name Adair, a different form of Edgar.
- USUnited States1 in 18K(measured from records)
- CUCuba≈1 in 7.3K
- CVCape Verde≈1 in 8.9K
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)
- Sources
- 143 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.3K (inferred from the name graph)
18,708 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Cuba, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from the Scottish male personal name Adair, a different form of Edgar
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Adair 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 | — | 18,708 | 1 in 18K | 19K | Adair | 143 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Adair | 30 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 1 | Adair | 15 |
| CU Cuba | #329 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Adair | 3 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Adair | 25 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Adair | 4 |
| CV Cape Verde | — | ≈66 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | 1 | Adair | 2 |
18,708 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CNE — Listas concorrentes (Eleicoes Legislativas 2026). 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)
Adair is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A male given name from Scottish Gaelic, of Scottish usage, equivalent to English Edgar.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Alaskan island
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Adal<
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, A Scottish name prominent in Ulster. It is also occasionally an anglicized form of Ó Dáire, * formerly in Offaly. MIF (where Robin Adair is identified)
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)
- John Adairb. 1757USAmerican politician (1757–1840)
- Robert Adairb. 1763GBEnglish diplomat (1763-1855)
- Jean Adairb. 1873CAactress (1873-1953)
- Tom Adairb. 1913USAmerican lyricist, composer, and screenwriter (1913-1988)
- John Adairb. 1934GBauthor, military historian and leadership theorist
- Gilbert Adairb. 1944GBScottish writer, journalist, translator, film critic and poet (1944–2011)
- Sandra Adairb. 1952USAmerican film editor
- Alice Adairb. 1966Actress (1966- )
- Deb Adairb. 1966USFilm sound engineer
- Daniel Adairb. 1975CACanadian drummer
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 48 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 19K | #1,927 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 18K | #1,949 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 18K | #1,834 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 does the name Adair mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Scottish male personal name Adair, a different form of Edgar Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Adair have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 19 thousand people named Adair, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled adair.
- How common is the name Adair?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,708 people named Adair in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Adair compared with other names?
- In Cuba, Adair is the 329th most common surname of 21,589 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Adair?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/adairThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Adair” — the 329th most common surname in Cuba. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.