Carver

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) wood-carver or sculptor; (ii) ploughman, from Anglo-Norman caruier

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/kɑɹvɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Carver is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 10K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K

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)

32,415 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
441 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 4.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CarverLatin(measured from records)
คารเวอรThai(measured from records)

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)

(i) wood-carver or sculptor; (ii) ploughman, from Anglo-Norman caruier.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Carver, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Carver 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 Carver is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#98032,4151 in 10K32KCarver441
GB United Kingdom—≈6,100 est.≈1 in 11KlistedCarver186
ID Indonesia—≈5,600 est.≈1 in 48K—Carver17
IT Italy—≈3,700 est.≈1 in 17K—Carver12
EG Egypt—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 30K—Carver6
DZ Algeria—≈3,300 est.≈1 in 13K—Carver2
IE Ireland#412≈1,300 est.≈1 in 4K—Carver15
NZ New Zealand#798≈680 est.≈1 in 7.3K—Carver30

32,415 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. 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)

Carver is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Ćàŕvëŕ

  • Polish surname16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Russian

    Also written Карвер, Karver, Карвър

  • Chinese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, China, Myanmar (Burma)

    Languages: Chinese, Burmese

    Also written Carvers

50 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)

Carver 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 OFr charuier/caruier ‘ploughman’ or from OE ceorfan ‘to cut, carve’, a wood- or stone-carver; first attested Peter le caruier 1203 P (Nt)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, The marshy estate or the estate of the spearman

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In English, Someone who carves; an artist who produces carvings.

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

  • In English, ngulu béli-mo

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

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)

1850190019502000George Washington Carver, b. 1864Louise Carver, b. 1869Jesse Carver, b. 1911Raymond Carver, b. 1938Steve Carver, b. 1945Jeremy Carver, b. 1950Brent Carver, b. 1951John Carver, b. 1965Danté Carver, b. 1977Jordan Carver, b. 1986

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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Carver,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 33 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Carver
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201032K#1,079
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200032K#1,014
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202031K#1,124
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • 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)

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 Carver mean, and where does it come from?
(i) wood-carver or sculptor; (ii) ploughman, from Anglo-Norman caruier. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Carver?
A machine transcription gives /kɑɹvɚ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Carver have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 32 thousand people named Carver, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled carver.
How common is the name Carver?
In the United States, the national register counted 32,415 people named Carver in 2010, about 1 in 10 thousand residents.
How common is Carver compared with other names?
In the United States, Carver is the 980th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Carver?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Carver” — the 980th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Carver parses inside a full name →