Dampier
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Dampierre, a Normandy place-name honoring St Peter; from Don/Dam- 'lord' + Pierre 'Peter'
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈdæmpiə(ɹ)/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Dampier is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- LBLebanon≈1 in 37Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 134K
- ITItaly≈1 in 200Kfew records
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)
- Record sources
- 245 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 37K (inferred from the name graph)
2,475 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Lebanon, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Person from Dampierre, a Normandy place-name honoring St Peter; from Don/Dam- 'lord' + Pierre 'Peter'.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world
(measured from records)Dampier 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 | 2,475 | 1 in 134K | 2.5K | Dampier | 245 |
| GH Ghana | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Dampier | 3 |
| IT Italy | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 200K | — | Dampier | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 219K | listed | Dampier | 69 |
| CH Switzerland | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Dampier | 1 |
| LB Lebanon | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Dampier | 2 |
2,475 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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)Dampier is also recorded in 4 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 Dampierre; first attested William de Damper 1225 Pat
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, various places in Normandy named Dampierre, in honour of St Peter. The first element, Dam- or Don, is an OF title of respect (from L dominus lord), prefixed particularly to the names of saints. Var.: Damper. Cogn.: Fr.: Dampierre.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, William, English buccaneer and
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, explorer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)- William Dampierb. 1651GBBritish pirate and explorer (1651-1715)
- Robert Dampierb. 1800GBBritish artist (1800-1874)
- Christopher Edward Dampierb. 1801GBNew Zealand colonist
- Alfred Dampierb. 1847AUAustralian actor
- Lily Dampierb. 1868AUAustralian actress
- Claude Dampierb. 1878GBBritish actor
- Louie Dampierb. 1944USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Erick Dampierb. 1975USAmerican basketball player (born 1975)
- Elizabeth DampierUSUS-american child actress
- Henry DampierBristol slave trader
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)9 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.5K | #12,520 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,652 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.3K | #12,553 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Dampier mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Dampierre, a Normandy place-name honoring St Peter; from Don/Dam- 'lord' + Pierre 'Peter'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Dampier?
- In English /ˈdæmpiə(ɹ)/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Dampier have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Dampier, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dampier.
- How common is the name Dampier?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,475 people named Dampier in 2010, about 1 in 134 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dampier?
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/dampierThe 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, “Dampier”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.