Fleming
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Flanders; surname attested by Theobald the Fleming (1147–60), likely brought by traders, artisans and weavers
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/flɛmʲɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fleming is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.4K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 2.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Fleming itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #932 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 535 (measured from records)
- 1 in 870 (inferred from the name graph)
90,677 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Flanders; surname attested by Theobald the Fleming (1147–60), likely brought by traders, artisans and weavers.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fleming 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 | #279 | 90,677 | 1 in 3.7K | 91K | Fleming | 535 |
| GB United Kingdom | #241 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | listed | Fleming | 299 |
| CA Canada | #235 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Fleming | 257 |
| AU Australia | #236 | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Fleming | 210 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Fleming | 14 |
| IE Ireland | #123 | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Fleming | 130 |
| NZ New Zealand | #197 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Fleming | 110 |
| GD Grenada | — | 130 | 1 in 870 | 130 | — | 5 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 129as Flemming | 1 in 417 | 129 | — | 9 |
90,677 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 scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Fleming is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Vars.: Flasher, Flashman. ders. In the Middle Ages there was considerable commer¬ Dims, (of i): Fr,: Flachet, Flachot. cial intercourse between England and the Netherlands, Aug. (of i): Fr.: Flachat. particularly in the wool trade, and many Flemish weavers Pej. (of i): Fr.: Flachard. and dyers settled in England. The word reflects an ANF form of OF flarnenc, from the stem flam- + the Gmc suffix
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A native or inhabitant of Flanders in Belgium.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Flemish person; person from Flanders.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, bacteriologist (Nobel 1945)
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Sir Alexander, Scottish
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)
- Sandford Flemingb. 1827CAScottish-born Canadian engineer and inventor (1827-1915)
- John Ambrose Flemingb. 1849GBEnglish electrical engineer and physicist (1849-1945)
- Williamina Flemingb. 1857USastronoma escocesa (1857-1911)
- Alexander Flemingb. 1881GBScottish biologist, pharmacologist, botanist, and Nobel laureate (1881–1955)
- Victor Flemingb. 1889USAmerican film director, cinematographer, and producer (1889–1949)
- Ian Flemingb. 1908GBBritish author (1908–1964)
- Rhonda Flemingb. 1923USAmerican actress (1923–2020)
- Peggy Flemingb. 1948USAmerican figure skater
- Renée Flemingb. 1959USAmerican opera soprano
- Andrew Flemingb. 1965USAmerican film director and screenwriter
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)
Attested in 53 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 91K | #342 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 88K | #317 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 87K | #350 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 130 | #111 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 39 | #143 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Fleming mean, and where does it come from?
- From Flanders; surname attested by Theobald the Fleming (1147–60), likely brought by traders, artisans and weavers. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- In which country does Fleming have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 91 thousand people named Fleming, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fleming.
- Where is Fleming most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fleming is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 870 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Fleming?
- A machine transcription gives /flɛmʲɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Fleming?
- In the United States, the national register counted 90,677 people named Fleming in 2010, about 1 in 3.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Fleming compared with other names?
- In the United States, Fleming is the 279th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fleming?
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/flemingThe 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, “Fleming” — the 279th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.