Bristol

loc · Latin script

Meaning: from Burstall (East Riding of Yorkshire), Bristall 1160–2, or Birstal (West Riding of Yorkshire), Bristal 1292; first attested John de Brystall 1392 FrY

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Bristol is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • USUnited States
  • CACanada

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
356 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BristolLatin(measured from records)
ΜπριστολGreek(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from Burstall (East Riding of Yorkshire), Bristall 1160–2, or Birstal (West Riding of Yorkshire), Bristal 1292; first attested John de Brystall 1392 FrY

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bristol counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Bristol is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom——Bristol133
US United States—7.7KBristol356
CA Canada—7Bristol85
IN India——Bristol10
NL Netherlands—listedBristol10
GY Guyana—553—6

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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Bristol is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United Kingdom, Panama, Portugal

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Brïstöl

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Bristól

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Bristol 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.

  • Bassa (Liberia): name of King Bristol, a paramount chief.

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • In French, Un bristol peut être une sorte de carton composé de feuilles de papier à dessin superposées puis collées mais le mot désigne surtout une carte de visite ou d’invitation. Le mot est l’adaptation de l’anglais bristol-board , carton (fabriqué à) Bristol.

    as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)

  • In English, city, England

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Polish, Bristol (a city, county, and unitary authority in southwest England)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Romanian, Bristol board

    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)

1850190019502000DeWitt Bristol Brace, b. 1859Edmund B. Gregory, b. 1882Herbert Bristol Dwight, b. 1885Arthur L. Bristol, b. 1886Muriel Bristol, b. 1888Dave Bristol, b. 1933Johnny Bristol, b. 1939Kate Bristol, b. 1990Bristol Palin, b. 1990Cristian Benavente, b. 1994

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 33 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Bristol
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020107.7K#4,611
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020207.6K#4,552
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020007.3K#4,473
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025553#204
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Bristol mean, and where does it come from?
from Burstall (East Riding of Yorkshire), Bristall 1160–2, or Birstal (West Riding of Yorkshire), Bristal 1292; first attested John de Brystall 1392 FrY Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
In which country does Bristol have the most bearers?
Bristol is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled bristol.

What do you want to know about Bristol?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bristol

The 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, “Bristol”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bristol parses inside a full name →