Creighton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Crichton, Midlothian, or from Creaton or Creighton in Northamptonshire/Staffordshire; place-names probably mean ‘farmstead by a rock’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɹeɪtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Creighton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 26K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 26K
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)
- Sources
- 385 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 20K (inferred from the name graph)
7,282 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Crichton, Midlothian, or from Creaton or Creighton in Northamptonshire/Staffordshire; place-names probably mean ‘farmstead by a rock’.
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 Creighton, 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)
Creighton 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 | 7,282 | 1 in 46K | 7.3K | Creighton | 385 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 26K | listed | Creighton | 170 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 1 | Creighton | 143 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 1 | Creighton | 124 |
| IT Italy | ≈880 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Creighton | 8 |
| IE Ireland | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Creighton | 63 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Creighton | 43 |
7,282 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Creighton 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, from Creighton, Staffordshire; first attested John de Creghton 1327 SRDb
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Pronounced ‘krai-ton’: transferred use of the Scottish surname, in origin a local name from Crichton in Midlothian, so called from Gaelic crioch ‘border’, ‘boundary’ + Middle English tune ‘settlement’ (Old English tin).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, University, NE
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, A Scottish territorial name, prominent in Ulster, also sometimes used as a synonym of Creaghan and Crehan
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
Scottish and English: transferred use of the surname, which is of Scottish origin. It arose as a local name from Crichton in Midlothian, so called from Gaelic crìoch border, boundary + Middle English tune settlement (Old English t n ).
as a word
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)
- Edward Creightonb. 1820USAmerican businessman and philanthropist (1820–1874); namesake of Creighton University
- Jim Creightonb. 1841USAmerican baseball player
- Mandell Creightonb. 1843GBEnglish historian and clergyman (1843–1901); bishop of the Church of England from 1897 to 1901
- Charles Creightonb. 1847GBBritish doctor (1847-1927)
- James Creightonb. 1850CACanadian ice hockey lawyer (1850–1930)
- James Edwin Creightonb. 1861USAmerican philosopher (1861-1924)
- Dave Creightonb. 1930CACanadian ice hockey player (1930–2017)
- John Oliver Creightonb. 1943USAmerican astronaut
- Jim Creightonb. 1950USAmerican basketball player
- Lucinda Creightonb. 1980IEIrish politician
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 33 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.3K | #4,840 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.1K | #4,567 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.1K | #4,847 |
| US United States | wru 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 Creighton mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Crichton, Midlothian, or from Creaton or Creighton in Northamptonshire/Staffordshire; place-names probably mean ‘farmstead by a rock’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Creighton?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɹeɪtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Creighton have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.3 thousand people named Creighton, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled creighton.
- How common is the name Creighton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,282 people named Creighton in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Creighton?
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/creightonThe 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, “Creighton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.