Besse
surname · Latin script
Meaning: De (La) Besse, nom de plusieurs localités surtout dans le sud de la France
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Besse is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 222K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 11K
- NLNetherlands1 in 103K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 230 (measured from records)
- 1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
1,497 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
De (La) Besse, nom de plusieurs localités surtout dans le sud de la France.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
How Besse is read(measured from records)
Besse is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French60%
De (La) Besse, nom de plusieurs localités surtout dans le sud de la France.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English29%
diminutive of Bess; Elizabeth
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Besse 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 | 1,497 | 1 in 222K | 1.5K | Besse | 230 |
| CH Switzerland | 775 | 1 in 11K | 775 | Besse | 19 |
| BR Brazil | 499 | 1 in 424K | 499 | — | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | 168 | 1 in 103K | 168 | Besse | 14 |
| AR Argentina | 106 | 1 in 429K | 106 | — | — |
1,497 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Besse is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, 202; patronymisch zu einer alemannischen Variante von Betz < Berthold
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In Latin, ablative singular of bes
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, feminine plural of besso
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)
- Nicolas de Besseb. 1320FRFrench bishop
- Antonin Besseb. 1877FRFrench businessman (1877-1951)
- René Besseb. 1891FRFrench politician (1891-1947)
- Raymond Besseb. 1899FRFrench painter (1899-1969)
- Georges Besseb. 1927FRFrench businessman (1927-1986)
- Roger Besseb. 1929FRFrench politician (1929–2009)
- Anne-Marie B.b. 1951FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
- Véronique Besseb. 1963FRFrench politician
- Ariel Besseb. 1965FRFrench actress (1965–2022)
- Émilie Besseb. 1983FRFrench journalist
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 29 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.5K | #18,237 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.5K | #18,474 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.5K | #17,755 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 775 | #1,580 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 499 | #17,123 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 168 | #12,285 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 106 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Besse?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛs/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Besse mean?
- Recorded meaning: De (La) Besse, nom de plusieurs localités surtout dans le sud de la France.
- In which country does Besse have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Besse, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled besse.
- Where is Besse most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Besse is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 11 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Besse?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,497 people named Besse in 2010, about 1 in 222 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Besse?
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/besseThe 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, “Besse”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.