Bouvier
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: bouvier (LL bovarius, a deriv. of bos, gen. bovis, ox; cf. Boeuf). Var.: Bovier. Cogns.: Prov.: Bo(u)yer, Boye, Boue. Cat.: Bover, Bove, Bober, Bobe, Boyer, Boye. Sp.: Boyero, Bu(ey)ero
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/buvje/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bouvier is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 3.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 31K
- USUnited States1 in 186K
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
- 308 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈19,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘herdsman’; from Old French bouvier ‘herdsman’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Bouvier is read(measured from records)
Bouvier is one spelling over 3 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.
- French74%
bouvier (LL bovarius, a deriv. of bos, gen. bovis, ox; cf. Boeuf). Var.: Bovier. Cogns.: Prov.: Bo(u)yer, Boye, Boue. Cat.: Bover, Bove, Bober, Bobe, Boyer, Boye. Sp.: Boyero, Bu(ey)ero. Port.: Boieiro. Dims.: Fr.: Bouv(e)ret, Bouv(e)ron.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Boötes (a constellation)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
De bouvier, surnom d’un conducteur ou gardien de boeufs.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English17%
‘herdsman’; from Old French bouvier ‘herdsman’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Synonym of bouvier des Flandres (“type of dog”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Bouvier in Spanish.
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)
Bouvier 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 | #142 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 2.3K | Bouvier | 308 |
| CN China | — | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 224K | — | Bouvier | 4 |
| US United States | — | 1,787 | 1 in 186K | 1.8K | Bouvier | 203 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Bouvier | 120 |
| BE Belgium | — | 653 | 1 in 18K | 653 | Bouvier | 51 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 625 | 1 in 5.4K | 625 | — | — |
| LA Laos | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Bouvier | 3 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 283 | 1 in 30K | 283 | Bouvier | 41 |
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; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Bouvier 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 Finnish, bouvier des Flandres (breed of dog)
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)
- Madame Guyonb. 1648FRnot in their usual nameFrench Roman Catholic mystic (1648-1717)
- Hannah Mary Bouvier Petersonb. 1811USAmerican textbook author
- John Vernou Bouvier IIIb. 1891USAmerican socialite and Wall Street stockbroker (1891–1957)
- Janet Norton Lee Bouvier Auchincloss Morrisb. 1907USAmerican socialite (1907-1989); mother of the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Lee Radziwill
- Jacqueline Pagnolb. 1920FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress (1920–2016)
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassisb. 1929USnot in their usual nameFirst Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963
- Lee Radziwillb. 1933USnot in their usual nameAmerican socialite (1933–2019)
- Yves Bouvierb. 1963CHSwiss art dealer
- Pierre Charles Bouvierb. 1979CACanadian singer and musician (1979-)
- Stéphanie Bouvierb. 1981FRFrench short-track speed skating coach
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 31 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 3.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 3.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 3.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 2.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 2.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 2.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 2.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 2.3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 2.2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 1.9K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.8K | #16,171 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.7K | #16,180 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- Where does the name Bouvier come from?
- ‘herdsman’; from Old French bouvier ‘herdsman’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bouvier?
- A machine transcription gives /buvje/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Bouvier mean?
- In French, bouvier (LL bovarius, a deriv. of bos, gen. bovis, ox; cf. Boeuf). Var.: Bovier. Cogns.: Prov.: Bo(u)yer, Boye, Boue. Cat.: Bover, Bove, Bober, Bobe, Boyer, Boye. Sp.: Boyero, Bu(ey)ero.
- In which country does Bouvier have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Bouvier in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bouvier.
- How common is the name Bouvier?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,787 people named Bouvier in 2010, about 1 in 186 thousand residents.
- How common is Bouvier compared with other names?
- In France, Bouvier is the 142nd most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bouvier?
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/bouvierThe 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, “Bouvier” — the 142nd most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.