Cost

surname · Latin script

Meaning: To incur a charge of; to require payment of a (specified) price

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

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

Cost is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 221K(measured from records)
  • ETEthiopia≈1 in 19K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 182K

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)

≈7,100 people, est.

Sources
240 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)

Ethiopia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

To incur a charge of; to require payment of a (specified) price.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cost 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 Cost is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈7,100 est.≈1 in 197K—Cost4
ET Ethiopia≈5,800 est.≈1 in 19K—Cost1
US United States1,5031 in 221K1.5KCost240
BR Brazil8481 in 250K848—2
IT Italy≈310 est.≈1 in 205K—Cost11
NL Netherlands951 in 182K95Cost14

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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

Cost is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Spain, France

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Čošt, Cośť, Cöst

  • Arabic surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Algeria, Spain, United States, Saudi Arabia

    Also written Cõst, Cöst, Còst, Çõst, Čöst

  • Romanian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Romania, Spain

    Also written Ćõșt

  • Greek surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Greece

    Also written Κοστ

43 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)

Cost 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 Romanian, first-person singular present indicative/subjunctive of costa

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

  • In ang, option, choice; possibility

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

  • In fro, cost; financial outlay

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

  • In gv, charge (monetary)

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

  • In Romanian, COST2 s. n. (Germanism reg.) Hrană, mâncare. ◊ Expr. A ține (pe cineva) în cost = a ține (pe cineva) în pensiune.

    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)

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting Cost
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.5K#18,423
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.5K#18,331
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.5K#17,582
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—848#10,727
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200795#19,782
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Cost mean, and where does it come from?
To incur a charge of; to require payment of a (specified) price. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Cost?
In the etymology graph, Costen is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Cost?
A machine transcription gives /kɒst/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Cost have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 7.1 thousand people named Cost in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cost.
How common is the name Cost?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,503 people named Cost in 2010, about 1 in 221 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Cost?

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

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, “Cost”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cost parses inside a full name →