Bolton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Person from Bolton’, a place-name from ‘settlement with buildings’ (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 23 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/bɒltən/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Bolton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 32,815 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 4.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 5.5K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 503 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
32,815 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Bolton
- English:/bɒltən/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)‘Person from Bolton’, a place-name from ‘settlement with buildings’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Bolton is found
(measured from records)Bolton 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 | #931 | 32,815 | 1 in 10K | 33K | Bolton | 503 |
| GB United Kingdom | #435 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | listed | Bolton | 285 |
| CA Canada | #838 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Bolton | 186 |
| AU Australia | #580 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Bolton | 200 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Bolton | 60 |
| NZ New Zealand | #524 | ≈960 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Bolton | 108 |
| IE Ireland | #851 | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | — | Bolton | 65 |
32,815 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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)Bolton 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, from one of several places so named, or from Boulton, Derbyshire; first attested Robert de Boulton a1191 YCh
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Robert de Boulton’ a1191 YCh; Thomas de Bolton 1262–3 FFWa; Robert Bolton 1371 AssL. From one or other of the many places of this name, or from Boulton (Derby).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, places in N England, esp. the one in Lancs., so called from OE bodl dwelling, house (see Bold 2) + tun enclosure, settlement. Var.: Boulton.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, ous places in N England, esp. the one in Lancs., so called from OE bodl dwelling, house (see Bold 2) + tun enclosure, settlement.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A place in the United Kingdom:
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)- John Boltonb. 1948USAmerican lawyer and diplomat (born 1948)
- Michael Boltonb. 1953USAmerican singer-songwriter
- Ivor Boltonb. 1958GBBritish musician
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)39 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 23 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bolton mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Person from Bolton’, a place-name from ‘settlement with buildings’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bolton?
- In English /bɒltən/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Bolton?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 33 thousand people named Bolton, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bolton. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Bolton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 32,815 people named Bolton in 2010, about 1 in 10 thousand residents.
- How common is Bolton compared with other names?
- In the United States, Bolton is the 931st most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bolton?
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/boltonThe 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, “Bolton” — ranked 994th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.