Chester
loc · Latin script
Meaning: ‘person from Chester’, Cheshire (‘Roman city’)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/tʃɛstə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chester is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 5.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.1K
- USUnited States1 in 9.3K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 440 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈400,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
‘person from Chester’, Cheshire (‘Roman city’)
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)
Chester 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 | ≈400,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Chester | 32 |
| US United States | 35,868 | 1 in 9.3K | 36K | Chester | 440 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | 27 | Chester | 197 |
| CA Canada | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | 4 | Chester | 136 |
| GH Ghana | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Chester | 20 |
| IE Ireland | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Chester | 34 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | 13 | Chester | 50 |
| MT Malta | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Chester | 3 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Chester is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, usually from Chester (Ches), but sometimes from Little Chester (Derby), Chester le Street (Durham), or Chesters (Northumberland); first attested Richard de Cestre 1200 P (L)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Roman site or camp; also an English city.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from the city of Chester, so called from an Old English form of Latin castra ‘legionary camp’. Use as a given name has become quite common in the 20th century.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, near an enclosure for livestock, from OF cheptel pen, fold Cheshire, or from any of the various smaller places so Chenuil; Chesterton called from OE ceaster Roman fort (L castra legionary camp). Vars.: Chaster, Chesters.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, of Cheshire, or from any of the various smaller places so called from OE ceaster Roman fort (L castra legionary camp). Vars.: Chaster, Chesters.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)
- Chester A. Arthurb. 1829USpresident of the United States from 1881 to 1885
- Chester Nimitzb. 1885USUnited States Navy fleet admiral (1885–1966)
- Chester Barnardb. 1886USAmerican businessman (1886–1961)
- Chester Conklinb. 1886USactor, comedian (1886-1971)
- Chester Morrisb. 1901USAmerican actor (1901–1970)
- Howlin' Wolfb. 1910USnot in their usual nameAmerican blues musician (1910–1976)
- Chester Benningtonb. 1976USAmerican singer, songwriter and musician (1976–2017)
- Vanessa Lee Chesterb. 1984USAmerican actress
- Chet Hanksb. 1990USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and musician
- Kira Kosarinb. 1997USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress and singer
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 75 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,408 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,281 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,555 |
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 given-name tokens
- 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 Chester mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Chester’, Cheshire (‘Roman city’) Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Chester have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 399 thousand people named Chester in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chester.
- How do you pronounce Chester?
- A machine transcription gives /tʃɛstə/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Chester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 35,868 people named Chester in 2020, about 1 in 9.3 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Chester?
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/chesterThe 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, “Chester”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.