Bedford
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bedford is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: person from Bedford, Bedfordshire or Lancashire, 'Beda's ford'.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 38K
- KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 1.3K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 381 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈31,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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 Bedford, Bedfordshire or Lancashire, 'Beda's ford'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bedford 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 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Bedford | 3 |
| US United States | 8,814 | 1 in 38K | 8.8K | Bedford | 381 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Bedford | 216 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 87K | — | Bedford | 2 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Bedford | 145 |
| GH Ghana | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Bedford | 17 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Bedford | 73 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 40 | 1 in 1.3K | 40 | — | 5 |
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: the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; 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)
Bedford 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, usually from Bedford, Bedfordshire, sometimes from Bedford, Lancashire, or Bedforth in Thornhill, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Osgar de Bedeford 1066 in DB (Bedfordshire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Osgar de Bedeford 1066 DB (Beds); Robert de Bedeford c1180 Bury (L); John de Bedforth 1379 PTY; William Bedford 1465 Paston. Usually from Bedford (Beds), but sometimes from Bedford (La), or Bedforth in Thornhill (WRY). 235
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, beside a stream, from Northern ME bekke stream (ON bekkr). 2. English (Norman): habitation name from any of the various places in N France, for example Bee Hellouin in of Beds., or a smaller place of the same name in Lancs.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Place names:
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)
- Gunning Bedfordb. 1742USAmerican politician 1742-1797
- Gunning Bedford Jr.b. 1747USAmerican politician (1747–1812)
- Nathan Bedford Forrestb. 1821USConfederate States Army general (1821–1877)
- Richard Bedford Bennettb. 1870CA11th Prime Minister of Canada (1870-1947)
- James Bedfordb. 1893USAmerican psychologist (1893-1967)
- Barbara Bedfordb. 1903USAmerican actress (1903-1981)
- Sybille Bedfordb. 1911DEwriter (1911–2006)
- Brian Bedfordb. 1935GBBritish actor (1935–2016)
- David Bedfordb. 1937GBEnglish composer and musician (1937–2011)
- Barbara Bedfordb. 1972USAmerican swimmer
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 40 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.8K | #4,029 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.7K | #3,963 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.7K | #3,764 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 40 | #142 |
| 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 Bedford mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Bedford, Bedfordshire or Lancashire, 'Beda's ford' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bedford have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 31 thousand people named Bedford in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bedford.
- Where is Bedford most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bedford is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bedford?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,814 people named Bedford in 2010, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bedford?
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/bedfordThe same 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), 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, “Bedford”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.