Butter
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Butter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country. In English, recorded as Either an occupational name for a maker/seller of butter, or a nickname from Middle English butor ‘bittern’.
- NLNetherlands1 in 14K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 75K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 195K
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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 214 (measured from records)
- 1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
1,235 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Either an occupational name for a maker/seller of butter, or a nickname from Middle English butor ‘bittern’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Butter is read(measured from records)
Butter is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English61%
Either an occupational name for a maker/seller of butter, or a nickname from Middle English butor ‘bittern’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
From Gaelic bothar ‘road’, likely for a family living by a drove road; first noted in 1331 and associated with Perthshire and the edge of the Highlands.
as a nameScottish Surnames
from ME botor / OFr butor ‘bittern’, probably a nickname; first attested Henry Butor 1169 P (Yorkshire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German12%
eher Übername oder indirekter Berufsname zu mhd. buter 'Butter'; 422
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
- Spanish5.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Butter in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Butter 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 1,235 | 1 in 14K | 1.2K | Butter | 52 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 75K | — | Butter | 77 |
| US United States | 562 | 1 in 592K | 797 | Butter | 214 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 195K | listed | Butter | 116 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 641K | — | Butter | 10 |
| AT Austria | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Butter | 18 |
| SG Singapore | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 198K | — | Butter | 7 |
1,235 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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 — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); 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)
Butter is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Italian, variante regional de Botter
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Nathaniel Butterb. 1583English publisher
- John Butterb. 1791GBEnglish ophthalmic surgeon
- Carel Butterb. 1881NLDutch singer (1881-1937)
- Oskar Butterb. 1886CZCzech journalist
- David Butterb. 1920GBBritish landowner, farmer, and company director
- Werner Butterb. 1932DEGerman journalist (1932–2009)
- Fred Butterb. 1957NLDutch actor (born 1957)
- Rüdiger Butterb. 1963DEGerman poet (b.1963)
- Michael Butterb. 1977DEGerman Americanist and university teacher
- Michel Butterb. 1985NLDutch long-distance runner
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 26 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.2K | #1,312 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 797 | #31,175 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 579 | #36,463 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 562 | #39,164 |
| 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 5
- 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
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 Butter mean, and where does it come from?
- Either an occupational name for a maker/seller of butter, or a nickname from Middle English butor ‘bittern’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Butter?
- In the etymology graph, Buro is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Butter have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Butter, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled butter.
- Where is Butter most common?
- Butter is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 14 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Butter?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,235 people named Butter in 2007, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Butter?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/butterThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Butter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.