Layman

surname · Latin script

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

Layman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: dweller by the wood or clearing; first attested William Leyman 1327 SRSx.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 33K(measured from records)
  • CACanada≈1 in 40K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 60K

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)

10,038 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
355 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LaymanLatin(measured from records)
레이먼Hangul(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)

dweller by the wood or clearing; first attested William Leyman 1327 SRSx

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Layman 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 Layman is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—10,0381 in 33K10KLayman355
EG Egypt—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 91K—Layman6
IN India—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 1.2M1Layman10
GB United Kingdom—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 60K8Layman59
CA Canada—≈950 est.≈1 in 40K1Layman69
IE Ireland—≈230 est.≈1 in 22K—Layman8
KR South Korea#748≈220 est.≈1 in 235K—Layman5
AT Austria—≈150 est.≈1 in 59K—Layman3

10,038 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Layman is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Canada

    Also written Ĺayman

61 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Layman is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, topographic name for someone who lived near a meadow, pasture, or patch of (fallow) arable land. Middle English leye.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, Americanized spelling of German Lehmann.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, Layperson, someone who is not an ordained cleric or member of the clergy.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, variant of Lay 3.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)

1940196019802000Ronny Layman, b. 1944Sandy Layman, b. 1950John Layman, b. 1969Jason Layman, b. 1973Jake Layman, b. 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 18 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Layman
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201010K#3,556
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200010K#3,277
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020209.5K#3,641
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Layman mean, and where does it come from?
dweller by the wood or clearing; first attested William Leyman 1327 SRSx Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
What are other forms of the name Layman?
In the etymology graph, Lay and Laity are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Layman have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Layman, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled layman.
How common is the name Layman?
In the United States, the national register counted 10,038 people named Layman in 2010, about 1 in 33 thousand residents.
How common is Layman compared with other names?
In South Korea, Layman is the 748th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Layman?

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

The 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, “Layman” — the 748th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Layman parses inside a full name →