Cadet

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: younger, youngest

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Cadet is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Haiti it is the 26th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 72K(measured from records)
  • GDGrenada1 in 2.2K
  • VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 51K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

4,607 people, 2010

Sources
268 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Grenada

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A student at a military school who is training to be an officer.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Cadet is read(measured from records)

Cadet 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.

  • French55%

    younger, youngest

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    Soit de (Le) Cadet, nom de plusieurs localités surtout du sud de la France, soit du surnom du plus jeune d’une famille.

    as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

  • English34%

    A student at a military school who is training to be an officer.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish5.8%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Cadet 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Cadet 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.

Where Cadet is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—4,6071 in 72K5.2KCadet268
BR Brazil—2691 in 787K269——
BE Belgium—1491 in 79K149Cadet10
CR Costa Rica—651 in 78K65——
ES Spain—561 in 893K56—7
GD Grenada—521 in 2.2K52—4
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines—21 in 51K2——
DM Dominica—11 in 74K1——
HT Haiti#26——listedCadet23

4,607 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 — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the ht-potomitan-names register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cadet is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Dominican Republic, Chile, Venezuela

    Also written Cadèt, Çädęt

  • Turkish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, United States, Haiti, Canada

    Also written Çädêt

56 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cadet is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Latin, third-person singular future active indicative of cadō

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Romanian, CADÉT, cadeți, s. m. (Înv.) 1. Tânăr (fiu de nobil sau de ofițer) care se pregătea pentru cariera armelor. 2. Elev al unei școli militare. 3. Membru al unui partid din Rusia țaristă.

    as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology

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)

1700180019002000Antoine-Alexis Cadet de Vaux, b. 1743Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, b. 1769Victor Cadet, b. 1878Auguste Cadet, b. 1881Rivers Cadet, b. 1892Thérésien Cadet, b. 1937Jacques Cadet, b. 1941Jean Cadet, b. 1942Daniel Cadet, b. 1960J-Live, b. 1976

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 27 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Cadet
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020205.2K#6,291
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.6K#7,240
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003K#9,988
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—269#28,891
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008149#11,045
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—65#1,874
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—56#41,262
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—56#40,981
GD GrenadaGrenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025202552#171
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)20252#260
DM DominicaDominica — Revised List of Electors May 202520251#226
HT HaitiPotomitan — Noms et prénoms haïtiens (Haitian name lexicon)———

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

Where does the name Cadet come from?
A student at a military school who is training to be an officer. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Cadet?
In the etymology graph, Cadette is a form of the same name in other languages.
What does the name Cadet mean?
In French, younger, youngest
In which country does Cadet have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 4.6 thousand people named Cadet, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cadet.
Where is Cadet most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cadet is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cadet?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,607 people named Cadet in 2010, about 1 in 72 thousand residents.
How common is Cadet compared with other names?
In Haiti, Cadet is the 26th most common surname of 1,519 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cadet?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cadet

The 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, “Cadet” — the 26th most common surname in Haiti. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cadet parses inside a full name →