Beaver
loc · Latin script
Meaning: from Belvoir, Leicestershire, pronounced Beever; or a nickname from the beaver (OE beofor); first attested Ralph de Belueeir 1170 P (Yorkshire)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Beaver is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 15K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 5.3Kas Bouwer
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 Beaver 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 407 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
≈74,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Beavers in GB United Kingdom, SG Singapore, EG Egypt and 1 more and Bouwer in ZA South Africa, NL Netherlands.
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)
from Belvoir, Leicestershire, pronounced Beever; or a nickname from the beaver (OE beofor); first attested Ralph de Belueeir 1170 P (Yorkshire)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Beaver 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Beavers | 8 |
| US United States | — | 21,640 | 1 in 15K | 22K | Beaver | 407 |
| ZA South Africa | #640 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | Bouwer | 79 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Beavers | 143 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Beavers | 6 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,100as Bouwer | 1 in 16K | 1.1K | Bouwer | 39 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Beavers | 7 |
| KY Cayman Islands | — | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Beaver | 4 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)
Beaver 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, (i) Ralph de Belueeir 1170 P (Y); John de Beauveir 1204 AssY; William Bever, de Beuver 1207–8 Cur (Lei, Do). From Belvoir (Leics), pronounced Beever. (ii) Godwyn Beure 1084 (c1300) ELPN; Adam Bever 1274 RH (So); Thomas le Bevere 1327 SRSx. A nickname from the beaver (OE beofor).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, N. American people
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, bive
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- James Addams Beaverb. 1837USAmerican politician (1837-1914)
- Hugh Beaverb. 1890GBBritish engineer and businessman (1890–1967)
- Jack Beaverb. 1900GBBritish film score composer (1900-1963)
- Fred Beaverb. 1911USMuscogee (Creek) and Seminole artist (1911-1980)
- Bruce Beaverb. 1928AUAustralian poet
- Terry Beaverb. 1948actor
- Jim Beaverb. 1950USAmerican actor
- Martin Beaverb. 1967CAviolinist
- Mike Beaverb. 1973CACanadian comedian
- Kevin Beaverb. 1977USAmerican criminologist and academic
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 27 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 22K | #1,488 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 22K | #1,665 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,732 |
| 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 Beaver mean, and where does it come from?
- from Belvoir, Leicestershire, pronounced Beever; or a nickname from the beaver (OE beofor); first attested Ralph de Belueeir 1170 P (Yorkshire) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Beaver have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 74 thousand people named Beaver in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled beavers.
- How common is the name Beaver?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,640 people named Beaver in 2010, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
- How common is Beaver compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Beaver is the 640th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Beaver?
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/beaverThe 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, “Beaver” — the 640th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.