Glass
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Glass is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: (i) ‘glass-blower’ or ‘glazier’; (ii) from Gaelic glas ‘grey-green’; (iii) Jewish name, either ‘glass-blower’, ‘glazier’, or invented from German Glass ‘glass’.
- USUnited States1 in 8K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.7K
- DEGermany≈1 in 25K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 469 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈91,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
- Gaelicglas(measured from records)
- German Glass‘glass’(measured from records)
(i) ‘glass-blower’ or ‘glazier’; (ii) from Gaelic glas ‘grey-green’; (iii) Jewish name, either ‘glass-blower’, ‘glazier’, or invented from German Glass ‘glass’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Glass 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈91,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Glass | 14 |
| US United States | #861 | 41,802 | 1 in 8K | 42K | Glass | 469 |
| GB United Kingdom | #915 | ≈7,500 est. | ≈1 in 8.7K | listed | Glass | 194 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Glass | 16 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Glass | 126 |
| NZ New Zealand | #826 | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | — | Glass | 72 |
| IE Ireland | #907 | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 9.6K | — | Glass | 36 |
| JM Jamaica | #258 | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Glass | 3 |
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. 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)
Glass 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, in England from Old English glæs 'glass', probably metonymic for a glass-maker; in Scotland from Gaelic glas 'blue, green, grey', probably referring to the eyes; first attested William Glase 1641 PrSo
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, From Gaelic glas ‘grey’; recorded from Bute in 1506 and Dingwall in 1652.
as a nameScottish Surnames
metonymic occupational name for a glazier or glass blower, from Old English glees ‘glass’ (akin to Glad, referring originally to the bright shine of the material), Middle High German glas.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Anglicized form of the epithet glas ‘gray’, ‘green’, ‘blue’ or any of various Gaelic surnames derived from it.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
ornamental name from German Glass ‘glass’, or a metonymic occupational name for a glazier or glass blower.
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Hugh Glassb. 1783USAmerican fur trapper and frontiersman
- Carter Glassb. 1858USAmerican politician (1858–1946)
- Ned Glassb. 1906USAmerican actor (1906-1984)
- Philip Glassb. 1937USAmerican composer (born 1937)
- Ron Glassb. 1945USAmerican actor (1945-2016)
- Julia Glassb. 1956USNovelist, journalist, editor
- Ira Glassb. 1959USAmerican radio personality
- Ann-Gisel Glassb. 1964FRFrench actress
- Noah Glassb. 1981USAmerican technology entrepreneur
- Caitlin Glassb. 1981USAmerican voice actress
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 38 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 42K | #823 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 41K | #770 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 40K | #843 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Glass mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘glass-blower’ or ‘glazier’; (ii) from Gaelic glas ‘grey-green’; (iii) Jewish name, either ‘glass-blower’, ‘glazier’, or invented from German Glass ‘glass’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Glass?
- In the etymology graph, Glas and Glasse are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Glass have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 91 thousand people named Glass in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled glass.
- Where is Glass most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Glass is densest in the United States — about 1 in 8.0 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Glass?
- In the United States, the national register counted 41,802 people named Glass in 2010, about 1 in 8.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Glass compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Glass is the 258th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Glass?
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/glassThe 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, “Glass” — the 258th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.