Goldsmith
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE goldsmið ‘goldsmith’; first attested Roger Goldsmiz 1250 MESO (Nf)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Goldsmith is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 38th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 11K
- USUnited States1 in 20K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 455 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈44,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Liberia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 OE goldsmið ‘goldsmith’; first attested Roger Goldsmiz 1250 MESO (Nf)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Goldsmith 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 | — | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Goldsmith | 9 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | — | Goldsmith | 5 |
| US United States | — | 16,346 | 1 in 20K | 16K | Goldsmith | 455 |
| GB United Kingdom | #916 | ≈6,500 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Goldsmith | 222 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Goldsmith | 154 |
| LR Liberia | #38 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Goldsmith | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | #928 | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Goldsmith | 77 |
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)
Goldsmith 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, occupational name for a worker in gold, a compound of Old English gold ‘gold’ + smid ‘smith’. In North America it is very often an English translation of German or Jewish Goldschmidt.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, gold, a cpd of OE gold Gold + smid Smith. To a large extent it is an Anglicized form of Ger. or Jewish (Ashken¬ azic) Goldschmid(t). Equivs. (not cogn.): Russ, and other Slav, names; Zolotaryov. Jewish: ZoREF. Hung.: Eotvos. Golsworthy see Galsworthy Golty see Goulty
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A person who makes, repairs or sells things out of gold, especially jewelry.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, Prominent in Ireland from the mid-sixteenth century, when several of the name occupied official positions in Dublin and other cities, till the end of the eighteenth. It is now rare outside the Belfast area
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Croatian, engleski pjesnik, pripovjedač, dramatičar i romanopisac ( Wakefieldski vikar )
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Oliver Goldsmithb. 1728IEAnglo-Irish writer, poet, and physician (d. 1774)
- Jerry Goldsmithb. 1929USAmerican film composer (1929–2004)
- James Goldsmithb. 1933FRFrench-British tycoon and politician (1933–1997)
- Jonathan Goldsmithb. 1938USAmerican actor (born 1938)
- Harvey Goldsmithb. 1946GBEnglish performing arts promoter (born 1946)
- Carole Middletonb. 1955GBnot in their usual nameBritish businesswoman; mother of Catherine, Princess of Wales
- Joel Goldsmithb. 1957USAmerican composer of film, television, and video game music (1957-2012)
- Tottie Goldsmithb. 1962AUAustralian actress and singer
- Jemima Goldsmithb. 1974GBBritish screenwriter, television, film and documentary producer
- Zac Goldsmithb. 1975GBBritish politician and journalist (born 1975)
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 30 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,229 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 16K | #2,046 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,277 |
| 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 6
- 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)
- 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 Goldsmith mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE goldsmið ‘goldsmith’; first attested Roger Goldsmiz 1250 MESO (Nf) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Goldsmith have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 44 thousand people named Goldsmith in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled goldsmith.
- How common is the name Goldsmith?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,346 people named Goldsmith in 2010, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
- How common is Goldsmith compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Goldsmith is the 38th most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Goldsmith?
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/goldsmithThe 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, “Goldsmith” — the 38th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.