Caraway
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Caraway is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: probably ‘spice merchant’; from Middle English carewei ‘caraway’.
- USUnited States
- GBUnited Kingdom
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
probably ‘spice merchant’; from Middle English carewei ‘caraway’
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)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Caraway is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A biennial plant, Carum carvi, native to Europe and Asia, mainly grown for its seed to be used as a culinary spice.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Hattie Ophelia, US politician
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In enm, Caraway or its seed.
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)
- Thaddeus H. Carawayb. 1871USAmerican politician (1871-1931)
- Hattie Carawayb. 1878USUnited States Senator from Arkansas and first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, first woman to preside over the senate, first woman to chair a senate committee, and first woman to preside over a senate hearing (1878–1950)
- Paul Carawayb. 1905USUnited States general (1905–1985)
- Elbert Carawayb. 1905USAmerican football and baseball player and coach (1905-1975)
- Pat Carawayb. 1905USAmerican baseball player
- Frances Marie Fritz Carawayb. 1918American architect (1918–2009) apprentice at Taliesin Resident City: Spring Green, Wisconsin Notes: Sister of Herb Fritz, an architect
- Dwaine Carawayb. 1952USMayor of Dallas in 2011
- Barbara Mallory Carawayb. 1956USAmerican politician
- Bryan Carawayb. 1984USAmerican martial artist
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 9 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.5K | #5,340 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.3K | #5,137 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.1K | #5,521 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #165,763 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #261,970 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 1 | #27,103 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Caraway mean, and where does it come from?
- probably ‘spice merchant’; from Middle English carewei ‘caraway’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Caraway have the most bearers?
- Caraway is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Caraway?
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/carawayThe 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, “Caraway”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.