Cruse

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) from a medieval nickname for a fearsome or dashing person, from Middle English crouse ‘bold, fierce’; (ii) perhaps person from Cruys-Staete in northern France

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

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

Cruse 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 39K(measured from records)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 40K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 43K

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)

8,614 people, 2010

Sources
359 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Cruse: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Cruse
  1. Middle Englishcrouse(measured from records)
  2. Cruys-Staetein(measured from records)

(i) from a medieval nickname for a fearsome or dashing person, from Middle English crouse ‘bold, fierce’; (ii) perhaps person from Cruys-Staete in northern France.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cruse 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 Cruse is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States8,6141 in 39K8.6KCruse359
GB United Kingdom≈1,500 est.≈1 in 43K—Cruse132
EG Egypt≈940 est.≈1 in 111K—Cruse6
CA Canada≈700 est.≈1 in 54K—Cruse62
DE Germany≈690 est.≈1 in 117K—Cruse62
AU Australia≈640 est.≈1 in 40K—Cruse92
NZ New Zealand≈180 est.≈1 in 27K—Cruse26

8,614 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. 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)

Cruse is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Argentina, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Crüse, Crusê, Crüsę, Çrûse, Crusé

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Crusé

46 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)

Cruse is also recorded in 2 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 small jar used to hold liquid, such as oil or water.

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

  • In ang, earthen pot, jug, pitcher

    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)

1700180019002000Karl Wilhelm Cruse, b. 1765Thomas Cruse, b. 1857René Cruse, b. 1922Holk Cruse, b. 1942Howard Cruse, b. 1944Jean-Paul Cruse, b. 1948Bruce Cruse, b. 1967Romain Cruse, b. 1982Tom Cruse, b. 1989

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 Cruse,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Cruse
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020108.6K#4,121
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.4K#3,874
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208K#4,311
US United Stateswru 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 Cruse mean, and where does it come from?
(i) from a medieval nickname for a fearsome or dashing person, from Middle English crouse ‘bold, fierce’; (ii) perhaps person from Cruys-Staete in northern France. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Cruse?
A machine transcription gives /kɹuːs/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Cruse have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 8.6 thousand people named Cruse, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cruse.
How common is the name Cruse?
In the United States, the national register counted 8,614 people named Cruse in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Cruse?

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

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, “Cruse”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cruse parses inside a full name →