Fairweather
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ME fair weder 'weather not wet or stormy', probably 'one with a bright and sunny disposition'; first attested Agnes Fairweder, Farrweder c1248 Bec (Norfolk)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈfɛɹˌwɛðɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fairweather is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)ME fair weder 'weather not wet or stormy', probably 'one with a bright and sunny disposition'; first attested Agnes Fairweder, Farrweder c1248 Bec (Norfolk)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)Fairweather 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, with a sunny temperament; cf. Merryweather. Accord¬ ing to a family tradition, a Scots family of Highland origin assumed this name on migrating southwards, in punning allusion to Job 37: 22, ‘Fair weather cometh out of the north’. Var.: Fareweather. Fairy see Feary
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Alternative spelling of fair-weather.
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)- Ian Fairweatherb. 1891AUAustralian artist (1891-1974)
- Digby Fairweatherb. 1946GBBritish musician
- Andy Fairweather Lowb. 1948GBWelsh singer and guitarist
- Bruce Fairweatherb. 1960USAmerican guitarist
- Carlton Fairweatherb. 1961GBEnglish footballer (born 1961)
- Jackie Fairweatherb. 1967AUAustralian triathlete and long-distance runner (1967-2014)
- Simon Fairweatherb. 1969AUAustralian archer
- Laura Thompsonb. 1987NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand Paralympic cyclist
- Erika Fairweatherb. 2003NZNew Zealand swimmer
- Peggy Fairweathercricketer
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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.8K | #15,964 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.8K | #15,766 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.7K | #15,652 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 31 | #62,854 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 31 | #61,483 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 18 | #44,931 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 6 | #72,866 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022) | — | 6 | #30 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 3 | #145,780 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 3 | #65,706 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 3 | #22,957 |
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 Fairweather mean, and where does it come from?
- ME fair weder 'weather not wet or stormy', probably 'one with a bright and sunny disposition'; first attested Agnes Fairweder, Farrweder c1248 Bec (Norfolk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Fairweather?
- In the etymology graph, Fair-Weather is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Fairweather?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈfɛɹˌwɛðɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Fairweather have the most bearers?
- Fairweather is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Fairweather?
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/fairweatherThe 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, “Fairweather”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.