Caldwell
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Caldwell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: ‘person from Caldwell’, from several place names meaning ‘cold spring’ or ‘cold stream’.
- USUnited States1 in 3.5K(measured from records)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.9K
- IEIreland≈1 in 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 519 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈380,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘person from Caldwell’, from several place names meaning ‘cold spring’ or ‘cold stream’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Caldwell 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Caldwell | 11 |
| US United States | #286 | 93,944 | 1 in 3.5K | 94K | Caldwell | 519 |
| GB United Kingdom | #458 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | listed | Caldwell | 209 |
| CA Canada | #368 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Caldwell | 208 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈8,600 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Caldwell | 12 |
| IE Ireland | #406 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4K | — | Caldwell | 61 |
| NZ New Zealand | #360 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Caldwell | 101 |
| IS Iceland | #689 | ≈88 est. | ≈1 in 4K | listed | Caldwell | 4 |
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)
Caldwell 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, from 'cold spring or stream' (OE ceald + wielle); first attested Adam de Caldewella 1195 P (Db)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from any of several places in England and Scotland, vari¬ ously spelled, that get their names from OE c(e)ald cold + 107 Caminel Calle through the accident of having the same lords—the Livingstones, Earls of Linlithgow. Vars.: Cal(l)endar, Callender.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A locality in Cardston County, Alberta, Canada.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, An English name now generally used as an anglicized form of Ó hUarghuis or Ó hUairisce (Horish, Houriskey) in Tyrone, and of Cullivan and Colavin ( Mac Conluain ) in Co. Cavan. 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)
- Robert Caldwellb. 1814GBBritish orientalist and dravidologist (1814–1891)
- Erskine Caldwellb. 1903USAmerican novelist, short story writer, travel writer, essayist (1903–1987)
- Zoe Caldwellb. 1933AUAustralian actress (1933–2020)
- Joe Caldwellb. 1941USAmerican basketball player (born 1941)
- Tracy Caldwell Dysonb. 1969USAmerican chemist and NASA astronaut
- Tommy Caldwellb. 1978USAmerican rock climber
- Kimberly Caldwellb. 1982USAmerican actress and singer
- Gary Caldwellb. 1982GBScottish association football manager (born 1982)
- Andrew Caldwellb. 1989USAmerican actor
- Hilary Caldwellb. 1990CACanadian swimmer, Olympic athlete, Pan American Games gold medallist
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 36 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 94K | #327 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 91K | #301 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 90K | #340 |
| 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
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
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 Caldwell mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Caldwell’, from several place names meaning ‘cold spring’ or ‘cold stream’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Caldwell have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 375 thousand people named Caldwell in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled caldwell.
- Where is Caldwell most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Caldwell is densest in the United States — about 1 in 3.5 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Caldwell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 93,944 people named Caldwell in 2010, about 1 in 3.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Caldwell compared with other names?
- In the United States, Caldwell is the 286th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Caldwell?
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/caldwellThe same 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), 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, “Caldwell” — the 286th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.