Askew

surname · Latin script

Meaning: ‘Person from Aiskew’, Yorkshire, meaning ‘oak-tree wood’

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Askew is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 24K
  • USUnited States1 in 24K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈32,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
410 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

AskewLatin(measured from records)
แอสคิวThai(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)

‘Person from Aiskew’, Yorkshire, meaning ‘oak-tree wood’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Askew 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.

Where Askew is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈32,000 est.≈1 in 43K—Askew4
US United States13,6831 in 24K14KAskew410
GB United Kingdom≈5,400 est.≈1 in 12K—Askew188
EG Egypt≈1,500 est.≈1 in 71K—Askew2
IT Italy≈1,400 est.≈1 in 44K—Askew9
AU Australia≈1,100 est.≈1 in 24K—Askew121
NZ New Zealand≈280 est.≈1 in 18K—Askew45
IS Iceland≈17 est.≈1 in 20K—Askew6

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. 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)

Askew 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, from Aiskew, North Riding of Yorkshire; first attested William de Aykescoghe 1366 SRLa

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Turned or twisted to one side.

    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)

1400160018002000Anne Askew, b. 1521Margaret Fell, b. 1614Reubin Askew, b. 1928Luke Askew, b. 1932Johnny Gentle, b. 1936Sonny Askew, b. 1957Billy Askew, b. 1959Vincent Askew, b. 1966Oliver Askew, b. 1996

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 19 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Askew
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201014K#2,634
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200013K#2,530
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202013K#2,692
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Askew mean, and where does it come from?
‘Person from Aiskew’, Yorkshire, meaning ‘oak-tree wood’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Askew have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Askew in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled askew.
How common is the name Askew?
In the United States, the national register counted 13,683 people named Askew in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Askew?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/askew

The 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, “Askew”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Askew parses inside a full name →