Cumber

surname · Latin script

Meaning: To slow down; to hinder; to burden; to encumber

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 236K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 652K
  • IEIreland≈1 in 300K

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)

510 people, 2010

Sources
155 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 236K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

To slow down; to hinder; to burden; to encumber.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cumber 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 Cumber is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—5101 in 652K510Cumber155
GB United Kingdom—≈280 est.≈1 in 236K—Cumber83
CO Colombia—≈83 est.≈1 in 588K—Cumber17
IT Italy—≈78 est.≈1 in 796K—Cumber2
CA Canada—≈62 est.≈1 in 611K—Cumber22
IE Ireland—≈17 est.≈1 in 300K—Cumber2
NI Nicaragua—≈10 est.≈1 in 619K—Cumber1
SH St. Helena#403———Cumber1

510 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).

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 Cumber,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Cumber
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010510#42,511
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000495#41,448
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020468#48,712
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

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 Cumber mean, and where does it come from?
To slow down; to hinder; to burden; to encumber. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Cumber?
A machine transcription gives /kʌmbə/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Cumber?
In the etymology graph, Kummer is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Cumber have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 510 people named Cumber, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cumber.
How common is the name Cumber?
In the United States, the national register counted 510 people named Cumber in 2010, about 1 in 652 thousand residents.
How common is Cumber compared with other names?
In St. Helena, Cumber is the 403rd most common surname of 3,440 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cumber?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Cumber” — the 403rd most common surname in St. Helena. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cumber parses inside a full name →