Brown
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bɹaʊn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Brown is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 108(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 204
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 227
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Brown itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #45 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 662 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 108 (inferred from the name graph)
1,437,026 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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 a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Brown 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 | #5 | 1,437,026 | 1 in 231 | 1.4M | Brown | 662 |
| GB United Kingdom | #4 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 204 | — | Brown | 450 |
| EG Egypt | #197 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 683 | — | Brown | 51 |
| CA Canada | #3 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 271 | 1 | Brown | 368 |
| IT Italy | #7 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 533 | listed | Brown | 121 |
| JM Jamaica | #2 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 108 | — | Brown | 81 |
| NZ New Zealand | #4 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 227 | — | Brown | 220 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 1,764as Browne | 1 in 57 | 1.9K | — | 5 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 1,083as Browne | 1 in 50 | 1.2K | — | 18 |
1,437,026 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); The page lists the most common surnames in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines based on data from official sources.; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; The page presents a detailed list of surnames in Saint Kitts and Nevis, focusing on their frequency and cultural signifi. 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)
Brown 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.
After the Jewish Edict for Surnames the family Braunschweig was added to: Mayer Braunschweig Braun, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, Descriptive surname from Old French/Old English brun ‘brown’, usually referring to complexion; Patric Brun recorded in 1194–1214.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from OE brun or possibly OFr brun ‘brown’; first attested Brunus 1066 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, English surname from a word meaning “brown”.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In English, English equivalent used in place of a German surname
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Robert Brownb. 1773GBBritish botanist (1773-1858), discoverer of the cell nucleus and of Brownian Motion (1773–1858)
- Clarence Brownb. 1890USAmerican film director (1890–1987)
- Violet Brownb. 1900JMJamaican supercentenarian (1900–2017)
- Herbert Brownb. 1912USAmerican chemist (1912–2004)
- Jerry Brownb. 1938USGovernor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019 (born 1938)
- Gordon Brownb. 1951GBPrime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010
- Ketanji Brown Jacksonb. 1970USAmerican lawyer and jurist (born 1970)
- Blake Livelyb. 1987USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1987)
- Chris Brownb. 1989USAmerican singer and rapper (born 1989)
- Millie Bobby Brownb. 2004ESBritish actress (born 2004)
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 84 sources across 51 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4M | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4M | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4M | #4 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 190 | #55 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 82 | #180 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Brown mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval nickname for someone with brown hair or a tanned complexion; or from the Old English male personal name Briin, from the nickname or a shortened compound name beginning with brun ‘brown… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Brown have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 million people named Brown, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled brown.
- How common is the name Brown?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,437,026 people named Brown in 2010, about 1 in 231 residents.
- How common is Brown compared with other names?
- In the United States, Brown is the 5th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
- What are other forms of the name Brown?
- In the etymology graph, Brunet is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Brown?
- A machine transcription gives /bɹaʊn/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Brown?
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/brownThe 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, “Brown” — the 5th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.