Horton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Horton, from place-names mostly meaning ‘muddy farmstead’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Horton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.4K
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.7K
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
- 533 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈310,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, 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)
person from Horton, from place-names mostly meaning ‘muddy farmstead’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Horton 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 | — | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Horton | 13 |
| US United States | #314 | 85,195 | 1 in 3.9K | 85K | Horton | 533 |
| GB United Kingdom | #321 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | listed | Horton | 264 |
| KP North Korea | #309 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Horton | 2 |
| IT Italy | #591 | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Horton | 15 |
| NZ New Zealand | #294 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Horton | 86 |
| IE Ireland | #387 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Horton | 31 |
| IS Iceland | #550 | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Horton | 7 |
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)
Horton is also recorded in 3 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 or other of the many places of this name; first attested Leofwine Godwines sunu at Hortune c1018 OEByn
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, habitational name from any of the various places so called. The majority, with examples in at least fourteen counties, are named from Old English horh ‘mud’, ‘slime’ or horn ‘dirt’ + tun ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’. One in southern Gloucestershire, however, is named from Old English heorot ‘hart’ + dun ‘hill’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, From the grey or muddy place.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- George Hortonb. 1859USAmerican diplomat (1859–1942)
- Max Kennedy Hortonb. 1883GBRoyal Navy admiral (1883-1951)
- Edward Everett Hortonb. 1886USAmerican actor (1886–1970)
- Bessie Loveb. 1898USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1898–1986)
- Helen Hortonb. 1923USAmerican actress (1923–2007)
- Johnny Hortonb. 1925USAmerican singer (1925–1960)
- Tim Hortonb. 1930CACanadian ice hockey player and businessman (1930–1974)
- Peter Hortonb. 1953USAmerican actor and director
- Ward Hortonb. 1976USAmerican actor
- Mack Hortonb. 1996AUAustralian freestyle swimmer
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 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 85K | #367 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 84K | #335 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 81K | #387 |
| 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 7
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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
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 Horton mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Horton, from place-names mostly meaning ‘muddy farmstead’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Horton have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 313 thousand people named Horton in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled horton.
- How common is the name Horton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 85,195 people named Horton in 2010, about 1 in 3.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Horton compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Horton is the 294th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Horton?
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/hortonThe 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, “Horton” — the 294th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.