Bissell
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bissell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ethiopia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: (i) Corn merchant, from Middle English bysshell ‘bushel’; (ii) ‘little Biss’, a nickname for someone with a wan complexion or drab clothing; (iii) a different form of Bethel.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 45K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 54K
- USUnited States1 in 66K
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.
- Ethiopia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 324 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈17,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ethiopia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) Corn merchant, from Middle English bysshell ‘bushel’; (ii) ‘little Biss’, a nickname for someone with a wan complexion or drab clothing; (iii) a different form of Bethel.
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)
Bissell 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ET Ethiopia | #484 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Bissell | 1 |
| US United States | — | 5,039 | 1 in 66K | 5K | Bissell | 324 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 45K | listed | Bissell | 119 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Bissell | 85 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 135K | — | Bissell | 8 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | Bissell | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Bissell | 18 |
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; the reaney-english-surnames-1991 register. 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)
Bissell is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, v. BUSHELL
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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)
- Clark Bissellb. 1782USAmerican judge and politician (1782-1857)
- William Henry Bissellb. 1811USAmerican politician (1811–1860)
- George Edwin Bissellb. 1839USAmerican sculptor (1839–1920)
- Anna Sutherland Bissellb. 1846USAmerican businesswoman
- Wilson S. Bissellb. 1847USAmerican politician (1847–1903)
- Clayton Bissellb. 1896USUnited States Air Force general
- Whit Bissellb. 1909USAmerican actor (1909–1996)
- Mina Bissellb. 1940IRIranian-American biologist
- James D. Bissellb. 1951USAmerican production designer
- Tom Bissellb. 1974USAmerican 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5K | #6,701 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5K | #6,308 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.8K | #6,812 |
| 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 2
- 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 Bissell mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Corn merchant, from Middle English bysshell ‘bushel’; (ii) ‘little Biss’, a nickname for someone with a wan complexion or drab clothing; (iii) a different form of Bethel. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bissell have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 17 thousand people named Bissell in Ethiopia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bissell.
- How common is the name Bissell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,039 people named Bissell in 2010, about 1 in 66 thousand residents.
- How common is Bissell compared with other names?
- In Ethiopia, Bissell is the 484th most common surname of 22,571 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bissell?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bissellThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Bissell” — the 484th most common surname in Ethiopia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.