Bancroft
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Bancroft, a place-name meaning ‘smallholding where beans are grown’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/baŋkɹɒft/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bancroft is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 42K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 62K
- GYGuyana1 in 7.7K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 351 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.7K (inferred from the name graph)
5,404 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled แบนคร๊อฟท์ in TH Thailand.
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 Bancroft, a place-name meaning ‘smallholding where beans are grown’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bancroft 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 | 5,404 | 1 in 62K | 5.4K | Bancroft | 351 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 24K | listed | Bancroft | 174 |
| CA Canada | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Bancroft | 102 |
| GY Guyana | 98 | 1 in 7.7K | 98 | — | 3 |
| TH Thailand | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 702K | #987,480 | แบนคร๊อฟท์ | 17 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 4 | 1 in 13K | 4 | — | 2 |
5,404 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 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)
Bancroft 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, from Bancroft in Ardeley (Herts), Bancroft Field in Soham (C), or 'dweller by the bean field'; first attested Stephen de bancroft 1222 DBStP
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Stephen de bancroft 1222 DBStP; John atte Bencrofte 1296 SRSx; Thomas Bancrofte 1481–2 FFWa. From Bancroft in Ardeley (Herts), Bancroft Field in Soham (C), or ‘dweller by the bean field’, OE bēan, croft.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, minor places so called, from OE bean beans (a collective sing.) + croft paddock, smallholding (see Croft). Var.: Bencroft (a place in Northants).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A placename:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Old English; from the bean field.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Edward Nathaniel Bancroftb. 1772GBEnglish physician, botanist, and zoologist (1772-1842)
- George Bancroftb. 1800USAmerican historian, statesman, founder of United States Naval Academy (1800-1891)
- Hubert Howe Bancroftb. 1832USAmerican historian and ethnologist (1832–1918)
- Frederic Bancroftb. 1860USAmerican historian (1860-1945)
- George Bancroftb. 1882USAmerican actor (1882–1956)
- Anne Bancroftb. 1931USAmerican actress (1931–2005)
- Ann Bancroftb. 1955USAmerican explorer
- Bronwyn Bancroftb. 1958AUAustralian artist, administrator and book illustrator (born 1958)
- Tony Bancroftb. 1967USAmerican animator and film director (born 1967)
- Cameron Bancroftb. 1967CACanadian actor
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 25 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.4K | #6,315 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.3K | #5,939 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.2K | #6,265 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 98 | #527 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 4 | #178 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of English Surnames (Reaney & Wilson, 1991) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Bancroft mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Bancroft, a place-name meaning ‘smallholding where beans are grown’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bancroft?
- A machine transcription gives /baŋkɹɒft/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bancroft have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.4 thousand people named Bancroft, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bancroft.
- Where is Bancroft most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bancroft is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 7.7 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bancroft?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,404 people named Bancroft in 2010, about 1 in 62 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bancroft?
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/bancroftThe 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, “Bancroft”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.