Cretin

surname · Latin script

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 2.5M(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 64K
  • BEBelgium1 in 1.7M

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)

135 people, 2010

Sources
108 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 64K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

recorded in Catalan

, subst. 1. fam. (I. Bot 7) ; - Stan, munt., 1572 (Glos), -u (Sez) ; -a f. (Ard ; Pas). Crezantu v. H r I s ant III 2. Crina v. Macrina 1. Crisant, -a v. H r i s ant III 1.

Sources 1

  • Dictionar Onomastic Rominesc

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cretin 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 Cretin is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1351 in 2.5M139Cretin108
CH Switzerland1321 in 64K132Cretin6
ES Spain91 in 5.6M9—2
BE Belgium71 in 1.7M7——
CZ Czechia31 in 3.6M3——

135 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)

Cretin 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 Mexico, United States, Argentina, Dominican Republic

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Crétin, Cretín

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Crétin

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Crétin

26 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)

Cretin 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, A person who fails to develop mentally and physically due to a congenital hypothyroidism.

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

  • In Romanian, idiot

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

  • In Romanian, CRETÍN, -Ă, cretini, -e, adj., s. m. și f. (Persoană) care suferă de cretinism; imbecil, idiot. ♦ (Om) stupid, absurd.

    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)

1940196019802000Christian Cretin, b. 1953Sébastien Crétin, b. 1970Dylan Cretin, b. 1997

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)

FormalMadame, Monsieur,Dear Cretin, (English)
InformalMadame, Monsieur,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 11 sources across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting Cretin
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000139#116,123
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010135#126,765
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020114#146,495
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202472#14,223
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—9#126,713
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20087#87,940
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—3#153,063
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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

How do you pronounce Cretin?
A machine transcription gives /kʁətɛ̃/ (IPA) for French.
In which country does Cretin have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 135 people named Cretin, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cretin.
Where is Cretin most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cretin is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 64 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cretin?
In the United States, the national register counted 135 people named Cretin in 2010, about 1 in 2.5 million residents.

What do you want to know about Cretin?

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

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, “Cretin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cretin parses inside a full name →