Houston
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Either from Houston near Glasgow, “Hugo’s village”, or from Gaelic Mac Uisdein
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Houston is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 5.8K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.9K
- CACanada≈1 in 6.6K
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)
- Sources
- 507 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Grenada
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Houstonnear(measured from records)
- Gaelic MacUisdein(measured from records)
Either from Houston near Glasgow, “Hugo’s village”, or from Gaelic Mac Uisdein.
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)
Houston 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 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.9K | — | Houston | 9 |
| US United States | 56,900 | 1 in 5.8K | 57K | Houston | 507 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | listed | Houston | 234 |
| CA Canada | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | 4 | Houston | 159 |
| AU Australia | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | 2 | Houston | 170 |
| BZ Belize | ≈85 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | — | Houston | 3 |
| GD Grenada | 42 | 1 in 2.7K | 42 | — | 3 |
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 scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Houston 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, ‘Hugh’s place’. The lands of Kilpeter in Renfrewshire were renamed after Hugh; first recorded as a surname in 1296 with Finlawe de Hustone.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, From the place name in Lanarkshire; linked to Hugh/Howe or Scots howe 'hollow'. First record in Scotland: William Howe in Brechin, 1519.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from the barony of Houston, Lanark; first attested Finlay of Huwitston, alias Finlawe de Hustone 1296 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A habitational surname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, street, New York City; county, GA
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Sam Houstonb. 1793USAmerican statesman, politician, and soldier (1793-1863)
- Houston Stewart Chamberlainb. 1855GBBritish-German racialist philosopher (1855–1927)
- Donald Houstonb. 1923GBWelsh actor (1923-1991)
- Bobo Brazilb. 1924USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler (1924-1998)
- Cissy Houstonb. 1933USAmerican singer (1933–2024)
- Thelma Houstonb. 1946USAmerican singer (born 1946)
- Robert Houstonb. 1955USFilm actor, director
- Whitney Houstonb. 1963USAmerican singer, actress, and film producer (1963–2012)
- Juicy Jb. 1975USnot in their usual nameAmerican record producer and rapper (born 1975)
- Jerami Grantb. 1994USnot in their usual nameAmerican basketball player (born 1994)
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 45 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 57K | #592 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 55K | #594 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 54K | #563 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 42 | #181 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| 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 given-name tokens
- 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 Houston mean, and where does it come from?
- Either from Houston near Glasgow, “Hugo’s village”, or from Gaelic Mac Uisdein. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Houston?
- In the United States, the national register counted 56,900 people named Houston in 2010, about 1 in 5.8 thousand residents.
- In which country does Houston have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 140 thousand people named Houston in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled houston.
- Where is Houston most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Houston is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 2.7 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Houston?
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/houstonThe 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, “Houston”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.