Ferret
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ferret is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country. In French, recorded as tag; aglet, aiguillette.
- UYUruguay1 in 17K(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 85K
- ESSpain1 in 108K
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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- Sources
- 88 (measured from records)
- 1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
464 people
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
tag; aglet, aiguillette
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ferret is read(measured from records)
Ferret is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French76%
tag; aglet, aiguillette
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ferret in Spanish.
- English5.9%
from ME fyrette, ferette; from OFr fuiret, furet ‘ferret’, lit. ‘little pilferer’; first attested Walter Feret 1296 SRSx
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
An often domesticated mammal (Mustela putorius furo) rather like a weasel, descended from the polecat and often trained to hunt burrowing animals.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ferret 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | 464 | 1 in 108K | 464 | Ferret | 24 |
| BR Brazil | 370 | 1 in 572K | 370 | — | 2 |
| UY Uruguay | 204 | 1 in 17K | 204 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 138 | 1 in 85K | 138 | Ferret | 6 |
| US United States | 119 | 1 in 2.8M | 171 | Ferret | 88 |
| CH Switzerland | 16 | 1 in 525K | 16 | — | 2 |
464 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Ferret 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 Latin, third-person singular imperfect active subjunctive of ferō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In wuu, Ferocious
as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
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)
- Tony Ferretb. 1850FRFrench architect (1850-1923)
- Matias Ferret i Parerab. 1888ESSpanish actor
- Claude Ferretb. 1907FRFrench architect and urban planner
- Pierre Ferretb. 1908FRFrench musician
- Sarane Ferretb. 1912FRFrench guitarist (1912–1970)
- Matelo Ferretb. 1918FRFrench guitarist and composer (1918–1989)
- Pierre Ferretb. 1949FRFrench architect
- Francesc Homsb. 1951ESnot in their usual nameCatalan economist and politician
- Raphaël Ferretb. 1979FRFrench actor
- Mar Pawlowsky FerretESscreenwriter
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 464 | #8,522 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 464 | #8,515 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 370 | #22,185 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 204 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 171 | #109,993 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 138 | #11,835 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 119 | #140,157 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 115 | #134,929 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 16 | #43,070 |
| 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
- 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
- What does the name Ferret mean, and where does it come from?
- tag; aglet, aiguillette Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Ferret have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 464 people named Ferret, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ferret.
- Where is Ferret most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ferret is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 17 thousand people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Ferret?
- In Spain, the national register counted 464 people named Ferret, about 1 in 108 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ferret?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ferretThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Ferret”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.