Kerby
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A children's ball game played in the street, the aim being to throw the ball against the opposite kerb and catch it on the rebound
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɝbi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kerby is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 77K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 683K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.8M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 15 (measured from records)
- 1 in 77K (inferred from the name graph)
4,345 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A children's ball game played in the street, the aim being to throw the ball against the opposite kerb and catch it on the rebound.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kerby 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 | 4,345 | 1 in 77K | 4.3K | Kerby | 15 |
| ES Spain | 9 | 1 in 5.6M | 9 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 8 | 1 in 683K | 8 | — | 2 |
| PL Poland | 4 | 1 in 9.6M | 2 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 3 | 1 in 2.8M | 3 | — | — |
4,345 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
- Emily Spencer Kerbyb. 1860CACanadian teacher, author, feminist, and social activist
- William Leslie Kerbyb. 1879(aka Ludwig Kopelowitz) (1879-1964) of the Humboldt Engineering Works Co 1879 October 16th. Born in Berlin as Ludwig Kopelowitz, ...
- Edwin Kerbyb. 1885AUAustralian politician
- Frances Kerbyb. 1905GBBritish political activist
- Henry Kerbyb. 1914GBBritish politician (1914-1971)
- William Kerbyb. 1938USAmerican mathematician and peace activist (1938-)
- Bill Kerbyb. 1950USAmerican screenwriter
- Jordan Kerbyb. 1992AUAustralian cyclist
- Charles Kerby-MillerUSprofessor at Wellesley College
- Jennifer KerbyCACanadian association football player
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)
Attested in 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.3K | #7,643 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.9K | #8,135 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.9K | #7,892 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 9 | #126,713 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #62,644 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3 | #154,370 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #346,871 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #344,068 |
| US United States | wru 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 Kerby mean, and where does it come from?
- A children's ball game played in the street, the aim being to throw the ball against the opposite kerb and catch it on the rebound. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Kerby have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.3 thousand people named Kerby, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kerby.
- Where is Kerby most common?
- Kerby is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 77 thousand people carrying it.
- How do you pronounce Kerby?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɝbi/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Kerby?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,345 people named Kerby in 2010, about 1 in 77 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kerby?
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/kerbyThe 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, “Kerby”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.