Bigelow
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably person from Big Low, Cheshire, meaning ‘large hill’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bɪɡəloʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bigelow is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 29K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 700K
- BEBelgium1 in 2.3M
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 Bigelow 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 19 (measured from records)
- 1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)
11,650 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
probably person from Big Low, Cheshire, meaning ‘large hill’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bigelow 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 | 11,650 | 1 in 29K | 12K | Bigelow | 19 |
| CH Switzerland | 12 | 1 in 700K | 12 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 5 | 1 in 2.3M | 5 | — | — |
| RU Russia | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 88M | — | Bigelow | 4 |
| CR Costa Rica | 1 | 1 in 5.1M | 1 | — | — |
11,650 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Bigelow 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, A surname from Middle English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, legendary manlike creature
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Big Foot [Sasquatch]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, US carpet co.
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
A botanical plant name author abbreviation for botanist Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879).
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)
- Jacob Bigelowb. 1787USAmerican botanist, physician, and educational reformer (1787-1879)
- John Milton Bigelowb. 1804USAmerican botanist (1804-1878)
- John Bigelowb. 1817USAmerican diplomat, lawyer and politician (1817–1911)
- Henry Jacob Bigelowb. 1818USAmerican surgeon (1818–1890)
- Henry Bryant Bigelowb. 1879USAmerican oceanographer (1879–1967)
- Robert Bigelowb. 1945UShotel and aerospace entrepreneur from the United States
- Charles Bigelowb. 1945USAmerican graphic and type designer
- Kathryn Bigelowb. 1951USAmerican filmmaker (born 1951)
- Bob Bigelowb. 1953USAmerican basketball player (1953–2020)
- Scott Bigelowb. 1961USAmerican professional wrestler (1961-2007)
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 11 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #3,086 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #2,910 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,110 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 12 | #53,184 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #98,543 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #27,838 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Bigelow mean, and where does it come from?
- probably person from Big Low, Cheshire, meaning ‘large hill’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bigelow?
- A machine transcription gives /bɪɡəloʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bigelow have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Bigelow, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bigelow.
- Where is Bigelow most common?
- Bigelow is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 29 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Bigelow?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,650 people named Bigelow in 2010, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bigelow?
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/bigelowThe 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, “Bigelow”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.