Bonheur
org · Latin script
Meaning, in French: + heure moment, time (from L hora hour), probably a given name for a child whose birth was felt to be a happy or lucky moment, e.g. one born to parents long childless. The mod. Fr
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bonheur is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 72K(inferred from the name graph)
- HTHaiti≈1 in 14K
- TDChad≈1 in 25K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 162 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈950 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Haiti, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
+ heure moment, time (from L hora hour), probably a given name for a child whose birth was felt to be a happy or lucky moment, e.g. one born to parents long childless. The mod. Fr. sense ‘happiness’ is a more recent development, and is unlikely to underlie any instances of the surname. Var.: Bonheure.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Bonheur is read(measured from records)
Bonheur 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.
- French94%
+ heure moment, time (from L hora hour), probably a given name for a child whose birth was felt to be a happy or lucky moment, e.g. one born to parents long childless. The mod. Fr. sense ‘happiness’ is a more recent development, and is unlikely to underlie any instances of the surname. Var.: Bonheure.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
goodhap, good fortune
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English5.7%
Rosa, French painter
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Bonheur 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 72K | 91 | Bonheur | 162 |
| HT Haiti | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | — | 2 |
| TD Chad | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 1 | — | 3 |
| US United States | 238 | 1 in 1.4M | 299 | — | 74 |
| BR Brazil | 49 | 1 in 4.3M | 49 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 551K | 9 | — | 2 |
| DM Dominica | 2 | 1 in 37K | 2 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; Statistics on popular names in Chad published on Students of the World.; the ht-potomitan-names 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicitéb. 1758HTnot in their usual nameHaitian empress (1758–1858)
- Raymond Bonheurb. 1796FRFrench painter (1796–1849)
- Rosa Bonheurb. 1822FRFrench artist (1822-1899)
- Auguste Bonheurb. 1824FRFrench painter (1824-1884)
- Isidore Bonheurb. 1827FRFrench sculptor (1827-1901)
- Juliette Bonheurb. 1830FRFrench painter (1830–1891)
- Ferdinand Bonheurb. 1837FRFrench painter
- Raymond Bonheurb. 1861FRFrench composer
- Stella Bonheurb. 1904GBBritish actress (1904-1997)
- Colette Bonheurb. 1927CACanadian singer (1927-1966)
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 21 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 299 | #70,545 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 238 | #79,846 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 170 | #98,770 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 116 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 111 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 105 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 97 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 91 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 87 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 58 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 56 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 50 | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Bonheur mean, and where does it come from?
- + heure moment, time (from L hora hour), probably a given name for a child whose birth was felt to be a happy or lucky moment, e.g. one born to parents long childless. The mod. Fr. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- In which country does Bonheur have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 949 people named Bonheur in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bonheur.
- How common is the name Bonheur?
- In the United States, the national register counted 238 people named Bonheur in 2010, about 1 in 1.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Bonheur?
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/bonheurThe 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, “Bonheur”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.