Horse

loc · Latin script

Meaning: either a nickname from the horse, OE hors, or for a worker with horses; first attested Richard Hors 1148–79 P (Gl)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Horse is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States
  • KYCayman Islands
  • AUAustralia

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.

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
161 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

either a nickname from the horse, OE hors, or for a worker with horses; first attested Richard Hors 1148–79 P (Gl)

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Horse counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Horse is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—386Horse161
GB United Kingdom——Horse37
AU Australia——Horse16
KY Cayman Islands——Horse1
CA Canada——Horse26

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 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Horse is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Horsé

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Hörse, Hoerse

  • Thai given name31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States

    Also written Sport, ฮอร์ส, Seed, Horst, โซติ

37 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Horse 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, nickname from Middle English, Old English hors, either for someone thought to resemble a horse in some way or for someone who kept or worked with horses.

    as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

  • In English, A hoofed mammal, Equus ferus caballus, often used throughout history for riding and draft work.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In kr, for me! Conj. in., I dress, prepare myself, get ready. sabrdte, n. a. the act of dressing. sabrdtema, s. dresser

    as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)

  • In ang, dative singular of hors

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Swedish, horse (heroin)

    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)

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 10 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Horse
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020386#57,050
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010287#68,547
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000281#65,862
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Horse mean, and where does it come from?
either a nickname from the horse, OE hors, or for a worker with horses; first attested Richard Hors 1148–79 P (Gl) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
In which country does Horse have the most bearers?
Horse is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled horse.

What do you want to know about Horse?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/horse

The 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, “Horse”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Horse parses inside a full name →