Boulanger
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: ginally the man responsible for dividing the dough into boules (balls). The name is comparatively late in origin (12th cent.) and replaced the older Fournier only in N France
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bulɑ̃ʒe/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Boulanger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Belgium than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 130K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 4.1K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 90K
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.
- Belgium (measured from records)
- Sources
- 264 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
2,838 people, 2008
Highest-authority source
Belgium
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
ginally the man responsible for dividing the dough into boules (balls). The name is comparatively late in origin (12th cent.) and replaced the older Fournier only in N France.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Boulanger is read(measured from records)
Boulanger 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.
- French71%
ginally the man responsible for dividing the dough into boules (balls). The name is comparatively late in origin (12th cent.) and replaced the older Fournier only in N France.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
baker
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
de boulanger, surnom d’après le métier.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English23%
Eggplant; aubergine.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Nadia, French music teacher/
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
conductor
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Boulanger 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | 2,838 | 1 in 4.1K | 2.8K | Boulanger | 44 |
| US United States | 2,551 | 1 in 130K | 2.6K | Boulanger | 264 |
| BR Brazil | 95 | 1 in 2.2M | 95 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 93 | 1 in 90K | 93 | Boulanger | 5 |
| AR Argentina | 83 | 1 in 548K | 83 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 21 | 1 in 243K | 21 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 21 | 1 in 265K | 21 | — | 2 |
2,838 people counted by Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register), 2008. 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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
- Louis Boulangerb. 1806FRFrench romantic painter (1806-1867)
- Ernest Boulangerb. 1815FRFrench composer (1815–1900)
- Gustave Boulangerb. 1824FRFrench painter (1824-1888)
- Georges Boulangerb. 1837FRFrench general (1837-1891)
- Nadia Boulangerb. 1887FRFrench musician, conductor, and teacher (1887-1979)
- Lili Boulangerb. 1893FRFrench composer (1893–1918)
- Daniel Boulangerb. 1922FRFrench novelist, playwright, poet and screenwriter (1922–2014)
- Julie Boulangerb. 1982FRFrench actress
- Pierre Boulangerb. 1987FRFrench actor
- Armande Boulangerb. 1997FRFrench actress
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 27 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 2.8K | #310 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 2.6K | #337 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.6K | #12,208 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.5K | #11,543 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,211 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 95 | #65,801 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 93 | #11,723 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 83 | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 21 | #3,500 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 21 | #41,825 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What does the name Boulanger mean, and where does it come from?
- ginally the man responsible for dividing the dough into boules (balls). The name is comparatively late in origin (12th cent.) and replaced the older Fournier only in N France. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- How do you pronounce Boulanger?
- A machine transcription gives /bulɑ̃ʒe/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Boulanger have the most bearers?
- In Belgium, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Boulanger, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boulanger.
- Where is Boulanger most common?
- Boulanger is densest in Belgium, where the national register counts about 1 in 4.1 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Boulanger?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 2,838 people named Boulanger in 2008, about 1 in 4.1 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Boulanger?
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/boulangerThe 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, “Boulanger”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.