Harmer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: either from OG Her(e)mar ‘army-famous’ or local from Haremere Hall in Etchinghara (Sx); first attested Heremerus de la Bolde 1176 P (St)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈhɑɹmɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Harmer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 132K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 421K
- FIFinland1 in 507K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 9 (measured from records)
- 1 in 132K (inferred from the name graph)
2,515 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
- OGHere(measured from records)
- Haremere Hallin(measured from records)
either from OG Her(e)mar ‘army-famous’ or local from Haremere Hall in Etchinghara (Sx); first attested Heremerus de la Bolde 1176 P (St)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Harmer 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 | 2,515 | 1 in 132K | 2.5K | Harmer | 9 |
| ES Spain | 24 | 1 in 2.1M | 24 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 13 | 1 in 421K | 13 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 11 | 1 in 507K | 11 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 6 | 1 in 1.4M | 6 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 5 | 1 in 1.2M | 5 | — | — |
2,515 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Harmer 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.
habitational name from Haremere Hall in Etchingham, Sussex, which is named from Old English hdr ‘gray’ + mere ‘pool’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a Norman personal name composed of the Germanic elements hari, heri ‘army’ ■+ mdri, meri ‘famous’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Heremcer, composed of the elements here army + nicer fame. Vars.: Harmar, Hermer.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, One who harms.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, present of harme
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)
- Thomas Harmerb. 1715British historian
- Alfred C. Harmerb. 1825USAmerican politician
- Sidney Frederic Harmerb. 1862GBBritish zoologist (1862–1950)
- Lillian Harmerb. 1883USAmerican actress (1883-1946)
- Florence Harmerb. 1890GBEnglish historian
- Tommy Harmerb. 1928GBBritish footballer (1928-2007)
- John L. Harmerb. 1934USAmerican politician
- Bill Harmerb. 1937CACanadian politician
- Sarah Harmerb. 1970CAmusician, activist
- Nick Harmerb. 1975USAmerican bassist
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 21 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.5K | #12,362 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,283 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.4K | #11,864 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 24 | #75,189 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 24 | #73,510 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 13 | #51,308 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 11 | #44,004 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 6 | #89,778 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5 | #63,363 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Harmer mean, and where does it come from?
- either from OG Her(e)mar ‘army-famous’ or local from Haremere Hall in Etchinghara (Sx); first attested Heremerus de la Bolde 1176 P (St) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Harmer?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈhɑɹmɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Harmer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Harmer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled harmer.
- Where is Harmer most common?
- Harmer is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 132 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Harmer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,515 people named Harmer in 2010, about 1 in 132 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Harmer?
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/harmerThe 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, “Harmer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.