Kelton

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from the village of Kelton in the parish of the same name in Kirkcudbrightshire

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈkɛɫtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Kelton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 122K(measured from records)
  • CNChina≈1 in 97K
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 105K

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)

≈14,000 people, est.

Sources
288 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 97K (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

habitational name from the village of Kelton in the parish of the same name in Kirkcudbrightshire.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kelton, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kelton 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.

Where Kelton is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈14,000 est.≈1 in 97K—Kelton3
US United States2,7171 in 122K5.3KKelton288
GB United Kingdom≈330 est.≈1 in 197KlistedKelton69
CA Canada≈290 est.≈1 in 130K1Kelton46
AU Australia≈240 est.≈1 in 105K1Kelton60
NZ New Zealand≈36 est.≈1 in 137K—Kelton15

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)

18001850190019502000John C. Kelton, b. 1828Allan C. Kelton, b. 1846Paige Kelton, b. 1901Elmer Kelton, b. 1926Richard Kelton, b. 1943Kevin Kelton, b. 1956Stephanie Kelton, b. 1969Aaron Kelton, b. 1974Kate Kelton, b. 1978Terissa Kelton, b. 1988

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)

FormalDear Mr Kelton,
InformalHi Kelton,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Kelton
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.7K#11,572
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#11,903
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.4K#12,399
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Kelton mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from the village of Kelton in the parish of the same name in Kirkcudbrightshire. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Kelton?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛɫtən/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Kelton have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Kelton in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kelton.
How common is the name Kelton?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,717 people named Kelton in 2010, about 1 in 122 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Kelton?

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

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Kelton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kelton parses inside a full name →