Jernigan
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Jernigan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 57th most common surname. Recorded meaning: variant spelling of English Jernegan, which is of uncertain derivation.
- LRLiberia≈1 in 5.7Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GHGhana≈1 in 6.9Kfew records
- SGSingapore≈1 in 17Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 397 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.7K (inferred from the name graph)
15,889 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Liberia, 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)variant spelling of English Jernegan, which is of uncertain derivation. Reaney believes it to be of Breton origin, probably identical with the Old Breton personal name lamuuocon ‘iron famous’, taken to East Anglia by Bretons at the time of the Norman Conquest. FOREBEARS! Thomas Jernigan was granted land at Somerton, VA, in 1668. Many of his descendants were sea captains. His son, also called Thomas, settled on Martha’s Vineyard, MA, in 1712.
Cited for this meaning 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Jernigan 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 | — | 15,889 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Jernigan | 397 |
| GH Ghana | #577 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | — | Jernigan | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Jernigan | 58 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Jernigan | 36 |
| LR Liberia | #57 | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | — | Jernigan | 2 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Jernigan | 7 |
15,889 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. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Thomas R. Jerniganb. 1847USAmerican diplomat
- Kenneth Jerniganb. 1926USAmerican activist, president of the National Federation of the Blind
- Gerald D. Jerniganb. 1942USAmerican mayor
- Terry L. Jerniganb. 1951USAmerican neuroscientist
- Candy Jerniganb. 1952USAmerican artist and designer (1952–1991)
- Tamara E. Jerniganb. 1959USastronaut
- Dennis Jerniganb. 1959USAmerican musician
- Darren Jerniganb. 1969USAmerican politician
- Jerrel Jerniganb. 1989USAmerican football player
- Timmy Jerniganb. 1992USAmerican football player (born 1992)
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,294 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,182 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,339 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Jernigan mean, and where does it come from?
- variant spelling of English Jernegan, which is of uncertain derivation. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Jernigan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Jernigan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jernigan.
- How common is the name Jernigan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,889 people named Jernigan in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Jernigan compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Jernigan is the 57th most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jernigan?
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/jerniganThe 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, “Jernigan” — the 57th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.