Beckett
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Samuel, Irish author (Nobel 1969)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛkɪt/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Beckett is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 12K
- CACanada≈1 in 17K
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)
- Sources
- 405 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈94,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Samuel, Irish author (Nobel 1969)
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Beckett 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 | — | ≈94,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Beckett | 7 |
| US United States | — | 11,763 | 1 in 28K | 17K | Beckett | 405 |
| GB United Kingdom | #745 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | listed | Beckett | 248 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 45 | Beckett | 158 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 1 | Beckett | 170 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 11 | Beckett | 61 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)
Beckett 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 Irish, This English name (usually of early French derivation) is now numerous in north-east Ulster and in Dublin but, though occasional references to it as early as the fourteenth century occur, it did not become established in Ireland till a century later, mainly in east Leinster; its close association with Ulster is later
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Croatian, irski književnik i utemeljitelj modernog teatra apsurda; tjeskobu univerzalne osamljenosti u beznađu suvremene civilizacije impresivno metaforički izrazio u dramskim tekstovima, osobito u klasičnoj kazališnoj drami 20. st. Čekajući Godota ; dobitnik Nobelove nagrade 1969.
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Clarice Beckettb. 1887AUAustralian artist (1887-1935)
- Samuel Beckettb. 1906IEIrish writer (1906–1989)
- Scotty Beckettb. 1929USactor (1929-1968)
- Wendy Beckettb. 1930GBBritish Catholic nun and presenter of documentaries for the BBC on the history of art (1930-2018)
- Margaret Beckettb. 1943GBBritish politician (born 1943)
- Barry Beckettb. 1943USAmerican keyboardist, session musician, record producer, and studio founder (1943–2009)
- Josh Beckettb. 1980USMajor League Baseball pitcher
- Alex Beckettb. 1982GBWelsh actor (1982-2018)
- Rob Beckettb. 1986GBEnglish comedian
- Moira Walley-Beckettb. 2000CACanadian-American television actress, producer and writer
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 36 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #3,045 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,071 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #2,916 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| 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 surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Beckett mean, and where does it come from?
- Samuel, Irish author (Nobel 1969) Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Beckett?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛkɪt/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Beckett have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 94 thousand people named Beckett in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled beckett.
- How common is the name Beckett?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,763 people named Beckett in 2010, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Beckett compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Beckett is the 745th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Beckett?
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/beckettThe 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, “Beckett” — the 745th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.