Burton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Burton; numerous English place-names, mostly 'fortified farmstead'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Burton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 2.4K
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)
- #797 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 559 (measured from records)
- 1 in 352 (inferred from the name graph)
110,529 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Burton; numerous English place-names, mostly 'fortified farmstead'
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)
Burton 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 | #239 | 110,529 | 1 in 3K | 111K | Burton | 559 |
| GB United Kingdom | #140 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | listed | Burton | 324 |
| CA Canada | #220 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 1 | Burton | 233 |
| AU Australia | #219 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Burton | 218 |
| IT Italy | #588 | ≈8,600 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Burton | 50 |
| NZ New Zealand | #190 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Burton | 113 |
| DM Dominica | — | 211 | 1 in 352 | 211 | — | 4 |
110,529 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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Burton 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, from one of several places called Burton or Bourton; first attested Ioluard in Burhtun c1150 YCh
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from any of the numerous places in England so called. In most cases the place name is derived from Old English burh ‘fortress’, ‘fortified place’ + ttin ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, very common in Midland and Northern England. The der¬ ivation is generally from OE burh fort (see Burke) + tun enclosure, settlement.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, An English habitational surname from Old English for someone who lived in any of several places with that name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, From the fort or castle meadow.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Richard Francis Burtonb. 1821GBBritish explorer, army officer, writer and scholar (1821–1890)
- Richard Burtonb. 1925GBWelsh actor (1925–1984)
- LeVar Burtonb. 1957USAmerican actor, director, and television host (born 1957)
- Kate Burtonb. 1957USAmerican actress
- Tim Burtonb. 1958USAmerican filmmaker and artist (born 1958)
- Cliff Burtonb. 1962USAmerican bassist (1962–1986)
- Mark Burtonb. 1969GBBritish screenwriter and filmmaker
- Sarah Burtonb. 1974GBEnglish fashion designer (born 1974)
- Danger Mouseb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician and producer (born 1977)
- Hilarie Burtonb. 1982USAmerican actress
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 55 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 111K | #280 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 107K | #255 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 106K | #292 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 211 | #65 |
| 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 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- What does the name Burton mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Burton; numerous English place-names, mostly 'fortified farmstead' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Burton have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 111 thousand people named Burton, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled burton.
- Where is Burton most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Burton is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 352 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Burton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 110,529 people named Burton in 2010, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Burton compared with other names?
- In the United States, Burton is the 239th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Burton?
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/burtonThe 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, “Burton” — the 239th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.