Lemaitre
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Old French maistre ‘master’, hence a nickname for someone who behaved in a masterful manner, or an occupational name for someone who was master of his craft
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lemaitre is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 4.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 15K
- BEBelgium1 in 16K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 288 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Old French maistre ‘master’, hence a nickname for someone who behaved in a masterful manner, or an occupational name for someone who was master of his craft.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lemaitre 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #176 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | 2.2K | Lemaitre | 288 |
| BE Belgium | #820 | 737 | 1 in 16K | 737 | Lemaitre | 66 |
| US United States | — | 411 | 1 in 809K | 411 | Lemaitre | 128 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 343 | 1 in 15K | 343 | — | — |
| CA Canada | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 278K | — | Lemaitre | 46 |
| FI Finland | — | 30 | 1 in 186K | 30 | — | 1 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Lemaitre is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname from French, equivalent to English Masters
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Édouard Lemaîtreb. 1791FRFrench playwright (1791-1801)
- Jean Lemaitreb. 1934FRFrench mechanical engineer and university professor
- Gastón Lemaitreb. 1949COColombian painter
- Rafael Lemaitreb. 1952USU.S. carcinologist
- Jean-Pierre Lemaitreb. 1957FRFrench politician
- Bruno Lemaitreb. 1965FRFrench immunologist
- David Lemaitreb. 1985BOBolivian artist and composer of Indie music
- Aurélien Lemaitreb. 1989French jockey (born 1989)
- Christophe Lemaitreb. 1990FRFrench athlete
- Aristide LemaitreFRphysicist at Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies
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 23 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 2.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 2.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 2.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 2.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 2.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 2.2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 2.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 1.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 1.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 1.5K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 1K | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 737 | #1,919 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Lemaitre mean, and where does it come from?
- from Old French maistre ‘master’, hence a nickname for someone who behaved in a masterful manner, or an occupational name for someone who was master of his craft. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Lemaitre have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Lemaitre in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lemaitre.
- How common is the name Lemaitre?
- In Belgium, the national register counted 737 people named Lemaitre in 2008, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
- How common is Lemaitre compared with other names?
- In France, Lemaitre is the 176th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lemaitre?
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/lemaitreThe 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, “Lemaitre” — the 176th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.