Bunting
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a bunting, the small bird
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bʌntɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bunting is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Cocos (Keeling) Islands it is the 47th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 29K
- USUnited States1 in 38K
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
- 379 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
8,725 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Buenting in CC Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
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 thought to resemble a bunting, the small bird.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bunting 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 | — | 8,725 | 1 in 38K | 8.7K | Bunting | 379 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Bunting | 205 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Bunting | 118 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈880 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Bunting | 98 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Bunting | 30 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Bunting | 26 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Bunting | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Bunting | 54 |
| CC Cocos (Keeling) Islands | #47 | — | — | — | Buenting | 1 |
8,725 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)
Bunting 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.
In English, nickname from the bird; etymology uncertain; first attested Wluric Bunting 1188 BuryS (Sf)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, word is attested from at least the 13th cent., and may be the first element in the placename Buntingford, recorded a century earlier. It is of unknown origin; it is possibly a deriv. of a Gmc element meaning ‘short and thick’, cf. Bunz. Vars.: Buntin(e), Bunten, Bunton, Buntain, Bontein, Bontine. Bunyan
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Strips of material used as festive decoration, especially in the colours of the national flag.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, This English name, of nickname type, has been in Cos. Tyrone and Armagh since the first half of the seventeenth century. It is famous on account of Edward Bunting’s life work in the field of traditional Irish music. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
A botanical plant name author abbreviation for botanist R.H. Bunting (fl. 1923).
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)
- Edward Buntingb. 1773GBIrish musician and music collector
- Sydney Percival Buntingb. 1873ZAPolitical activist in South Africa
- Basil Buntingb. 1900GBpoet (1900–1985)
- Mary Buntingb. 1910USmicrobiologist and educator (1910–1998)
- William Buntingb. 1916GBBritish environmentalist
- John Buntingb. 1927GBBritish artist
- Eve Buntingb. 1928GBAmerican children's writer
- David Tibetb. 1960GBnot in their usual nameBritish singer-songwriter and visual artist
- Madchildb. 1975CAnot in their usual nameCanadian rapper
- Stephen Buntingb. 1985GBEnglish darts player (born 1985)
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 23 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.7K | #4,072 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.4K | #3,872 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.1K | #4,225 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| 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 Bunting mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a bunting, the small bird. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bunting?
- A machine transcription gives /bʌntɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bunting have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.7 thousand people named Bunting, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bunting.
- How common is the name Bunting?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,725 people named Bunting in 2010, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
- How common is Bunting compared with other names?
- In Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Bunting is the 47th most common surname of 484 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bunting?
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/buntingThe 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, “Bunting” — the 47th most common surname in Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.