Higham
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Higham, a name of various English places, variously ‘high homestead’ or ‘high enclosure’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/haɪəm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Higham is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Higham, a name of various English places, variously ‘high homestead’ or ‘high enclosure’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Higham is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from one of the Highams; first attested Osward de Hecham 1176 P (Ess)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
habitational name from any of the many places in England so called, of which the most likely source for present-day bearers is that near Burnley. The place name is from Old English heah ‘high’ -I- ham ‘homestead’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, the many places in England so called, of which the most plausible candidate for present-day bearers is that near Burnley. The placename is from OE heah High + ham homestead. Var.: Hyam. Highet Scots: habitation name, probably fromHighgate in the former county of Ayrs. (now part of Strathclyde region), so called from OE heah High + geat Gate. Vars.: Hyett; Hyatt (also Jewish, see Chait).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Any of six villages in England:
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)
- Mary Highamb. 1819AUAustralian merchant
- Robin Highamb. 1925USAmerican military historian (1925–2015)
- Peter Highamb. 1930GBEnglish footballer (1930-2026)
- Charles Highamb. 1931GBEnglish writer (1931-2012)
- Charles Highamb. 1939NZNew Zealand archaeologist
- Nicholas Highamb. 1961GBBritish mathematician specialized in numerical analysis
- Thomas Highamb. 1966NZNew Zealand archaeologist
- James Highamb. 1968NZprofessor of tourism at University of Otago, New Zealand
- Darrel Highamb. 1970GBBritish musician
- Robert HighamGBarchaeologist
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 | 1.7K | #17,111 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,646 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,466 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 26 | #18,452 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 25 | #73,335 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 25 | #71,513 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 13 | #61,259 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #61,562 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 8 | #45,039 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #177,759 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 6 | #72,458 |
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 Higham mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Higham, a name of various English places, variously ‘high homestead’ or ‘high enclosure’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Higham?
- A machine transcription gives /haɪəm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Higham have the most bearers?
- Higham is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Higham?
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/highamThe 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, “Higham”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.