Lister
surname · Latin script
Meaning: dyer, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac an Fleideir ‘son of the arrow-maker’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lister is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 9.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 14K
- CACanada≈1 in 27K
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)
- Sources
- 367 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.9K (inferred from the name graph)
8,350 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
dyer, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac an Fleideir ‘son of the arrow-maker’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lister 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 | — | 8,350 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Lister | 367 |
| GB United Kingdom | #835 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 9.9K | listed | Lister | 221 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 1 | Lister | 143 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Lister | 139 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Lister | 3 |
| NZ New Zealand | #979 | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Lister | 73 |
8,350 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)
Lister 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 English, from ME lit(t)e ‘to dye’, a dyer; Anglian surname; first attested Ralph Litster 1286 Wak (Yorkshire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, occupational name for a dyer. Middle English litster, an agent derivative (originally feminine; compare Baxter) of Ut(t)e(n) ‘to dye’ (Old Norse lita). This term was used principally in East Anglia and northern and eastern England (areas of Scandinavian settlement), and to this day the surname is found principally in these regions, especially in Yorkshire.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Fhleisdeir ‘son of the arrow maker’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Alternative form of leister (“fish spear”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Josepin, English surgeon
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Martin Listerb. 1639GBEnglish naturalist and physician (1639–1712)
- Joseph Jackson Listerb. 1786GBBritish physicist
- Anne Listerb. 1791GBEnglish landowner and lesbian diarist (1791–1840)
- Joseph Listerb. 1827GBBritish surgeon and antiseptic pioneer (1827–1912)
- Moira Listerb. 1923ZAactress (1923-2007)
- Gwen Listerb. 1953NANamibian journalist
- Tommy Lister Jr.b. 1958USAmerican actor and wrestler (1958–2020)
- Perri Listerb. 1959GBBritish actor, singer and dancer
- Dean Listerb. 1976USAmerican martial artist
- Zoe Lister-Jonesb. 1982USAmerican actress, screenwriter and director
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 44 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.3K | #4,250 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8K | #4,299 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.9K | #4,158 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Lister mean, and where does it come from?
- dyer, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac an Fleideir ‘son of the arrow-maker’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Lister?
- In the etymology graph, List is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Lister have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.3 thousand people named Lister, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lister.
- How common is the name Lister?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,350 people named Lister in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Lister compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Lister is the 835th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lister?
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/listerThe 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, “Lister” — the 835th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.