Counter
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Counter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from Anglo-French countour/Old French conteor ‘one who counts, reckons; accountant, treasurer’; first attested Matthew Cunter 1250 Fees (Ha).
- USUnited States1 in 383K(measured from records)
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 15 (measured from records)
- 1 in 383K (inferred from the name graph)
869 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Anglo-French countour/Old French conteor ‘one who counts, reckons; accountant, treasurer’; first attested Matthew Cunter 1250 Fees (Ha)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Counter 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 869 | 1 in 383K | 872 | Counter | 13 |
| FR France | — | — | — | Counter | 15 |
| IN India | — | — | 4 | — | — |
869 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the in-instate-surnames-bystate 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)
Counter 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, One who counts.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Chinese, counter; front desk; reception desk (Classifier: 個／个 c; 張／张 c)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, counter-attack, counter
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)
- Nick Counterb. 1940USAmerican lawyer
- Peter Counterb. 1987CACanadian writer
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 7 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 872 | #26,332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 869 | #27,678 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 864 | #29,195 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 4 | #27,184 |
| 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 Counter mean, and where does it come from?
- from Anglo-French countour/Old French conteor ‘one who counts, reckons; accountant, treasurer’; first attested Matthew Cunter 1250 Fees (Ha) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Counter?
- In the etymology graph, Rechner is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Counter have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 869 people named Counter, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled counter.
- Where is Counter most common?
- Counter is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 383 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Counter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 869 people named Counter in 2010, about 1 in 383 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Counter?
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/counterThe 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, “Counter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.