Hume
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Hume is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from ODa hulm with loss of l before the labial; see HOLM, HOME; first attested Walter de Hulmo (Humo) 1221 Cur (Sf).
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 14K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 15K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 361 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
6,573 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from ODa hulm with loss of l before the labial; see HOLM, HOME; first attested Walter de Hulmo (Humo) 1221 Cur (Sf)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hume 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 | — | 6,573 | 1 in 51K | 6.7K | Hume | 361 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Hume | 195 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Hume | 156 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Hume | 144 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Hume | 35 |
| NZ New Zealand | #429 | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Hume | 75 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Hume | 39 |
6,573 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000. 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)
Hume 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 the barony of Home in Berwickshire.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A Scottish habitational surname from Home in Berwickshire.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, variant of Holme
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, David, Scottish philosopher; pers.
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Old English; the river island
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)
- David Humeb. 1711GBScottish philosopher, economist, and historian (1711-1776)
- Joseph Humeb. 1777GBScottish surgeon and Radical politician (1777-1855)
- Hamilton Humeb. 1797AUAustralian explorer (1797–1873)
- Allan Octavian Humeb. 1829GBBritish Ornithologist and Founder of the Indian National Congress (1829–1912)
- Cyril Humeb. 1900USAmerican screenwriter
- Benita Humeb. 1906GBBritish actress (1906–1967)
- Elsie Tub. 1913GBnot in their usual nameHong Kong politician and social activist (1913-2015)
- George Basil Humeb. 1923GBBritish Roman-Catholic Benedictine monk and prelate, archbishop of Westminster, cardinal (1923-1999)
- Alan Humeb. 1924GBEnglish cinematographer (1924-2010)
- John Humeb. 1937GBIrish politician from Northern Ireland (1937–2020)
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 35 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.7K | #4,801 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.6K | #5,301 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.3K | #5,330 |
| 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 Hume mean, and where does it come from?
- from ODa hulm with loss of l before the labial; see HOLM, HOME; first attested Walter de Hulmo (Humo) 1221 Cur (Sf) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Hume have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.6 thousand people named Hume, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hume.
- How common is the name Hume?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,573 people named Hume in 2010, about 1 in 51 thousand residents.
- How common is Hume compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Hume is the 429th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hume?
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/humeThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Hume” — the 429th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.