Letterman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: also Lettermann: ‘person from Letter’ near Hanover, Germany; or from a medieval Dutch nickname for a short person; also a different form of Lett
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɛtɚmæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Letterman is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- NLNetherlands
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
also Lettermann: ‘person from Letter’ near Hanover, Germany; or from a medieval Dutch nickname for a short person; also a different form of Lett.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Letterman is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, nickname for a short person, from Middle Dutch luttel, littel, lettel ‘small’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A student who has attained a specified level of participation in a sporting or other activity, and is awarded a cloth “letter” to be affixed to an item of clothing.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, David, US TV personality
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Dutch, 3. German (Lettermann): habitational name for someone from Letter, near Hannover.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Dutch, elaborated form of Lett
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)
- Jonathan Lettermanb. 1824USUnited States Army officer and surgeon (1824–1872)
- William Henry Lettermanb. 1832USCo-founder of Phi Kappa Psi (1832-1881)
- George Washington Lettermanb. 1840USAmerican botanist and botanical collector (1840 - 1913)
- Russell Lettermanb. 1933USAmerican politician
- David Lettermanb. 1947USAmerican comedian and television host
- Rob Lettermanb. 1970USAmerican film director
- Rebecca S. LettermanUSprofessor
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 9 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.7K | #15,880 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.7K | #16,775 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 624 | #35,945 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 128 | #15,580 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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)
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 Letterman mean, and where does it come from?
- also Lettermann: ‘person from Letter’ near Hanover, Germany; or from a medieval Dutch nickname for a short person; also a different form of Lett. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Letterman?
- A machine transcription gives /lɛtɚmæn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Letterman have the most bearers?
- Letterman is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Letterman?
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/lettermanThe 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, “Letterman”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.