Bryson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘son of Brice (i)’; or from Irish Gaelic Ó Briosdaín, an alteration of Ó Muirgheasdin
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɹaɪsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bryson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 36th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 17K
- USUnited States1 in 18K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 447 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
18,486 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Liberia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘son of Brice (i)’; or from Irish Gaelic Ó Briosdaín, an alteration of Ó Muirgheasdin.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bryson 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 | — | 18,486 | 1 in 18K | 58K | Bryson | 447 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 3 | Bryson | 197 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 9 | Bryson | 146 |
| LR Liberia | #36 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Bryson | 2 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 4 | Bryson | 139 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 3 | 1 in 18K | 3 | — | — |
18,486 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Bryson is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Patronymic from Bryce/Bricius, recorded from 1392 with Duncan Brcseson.
as a nameScottish Surnames
Mainly U.S.: transferred use of the surname, which has a double origin. In part it represents a patronymic derived from the given name Brice or Bryce, in part it is an Anglicized form of the Irish Gaelic surname O Briosdin, an altered form of O Muirgheasdin ‘descendant of Muirgheasan’. The latter is a personal
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, This English name, alias Briceson, is used in Cos. Donegal and Derry as the modern form of Ó Muirgheasáin, first anglicized as O’Mrisane and later sometimes O’Morison. Muirgheas (sea valour) equates with Maurice. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Winifred Brysonb. 1892USactress (1892-1987)
- Arthur E. Brysonb. 1925USAmerican control theorist
- John Brysonb. 1943USAmerican businessman (1943–2025)
- William Curtis Brysonb. 1945USAmerican judge
- Bill Brysonb. 1951USAmerican-British author (born 1951)
- Peabo Brysonb. 1951USAmerican singer (1951—2026)
- David Brysonb. 1961USAmerican musician
- Craig Brysonb. 1986GBScottish footballer (born 1986)
- Blair St. Clairb. 1995USnot in their usual nameAmerican drag queen and singer
- Tina Payne BrysonUSAmerican teacher
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 49 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 18K | #1,954 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 18K | #1,867 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 18K | #2,018 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 3 | #179 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Bryson mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘son of Brice (i)’; or from Irish Gaelic Ó Briosdaín, an alteration of Ó Muirgheasdin. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bryson have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Bryson, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bryson.
- How common is the name Bryson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,486 people named Bryson in 2010, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Bryson compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Bryson is the 36th most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Bryson?
- A machine transcription gives /bɹaɪsən/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Bryson?
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/brysonThe 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, “Bryson” — the 36th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.