Lock
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) Lockmaker; (ii) person living by a lockable enclosure; (iii) lock-keeper; (iv) medieval nickname for someone with fine curly hair; (v) Scottish and northern English variant of Lucas
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɑk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lock is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 9.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 11K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 23K
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
- 400 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.7K (inferred from the name graph)
6,936 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
(i) Lockmaker; (ii) person living by a lockable enclosure; (iii) lock-keeper; (iv) medieval nickname for someone with fine curly hair; (v) Scottish and northern English variant of Lucas.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Lock, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lock 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 | — | 6,936 | 1 in 48K | 6.9K | Lock | 400 |
| GB United Kingdom | #907 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Lock | 222 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Lock | 165 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Lock | 86 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Lock | 51 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Lock | 58 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Lock | 69 |
6,936 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. 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)
Lock 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 OE loc(c) ‘lock (of hair)’ or loc(a) ‘enclosure’; first attested Leuric Loc, Leovric Locc 1130 P
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, nickname for a person with fine hair, or curly hair, from Middle English loc. Middle High German lock(e) ‘lock (of hair)’, ‘curl’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, metonymic occupational name for a locksmith, from Middle English, Old English loc ‘lock’, ‘fastening’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Something used for fastening, which can only be opened with a key or combination.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Übername zu mhd. loc „Haarlocke“; bezeichnet eine Person mit Locken. Bearer count: 511.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
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)
- Frank Lockb. 1922GBEnglish footballer (1922-1985)
- Don Lockb. 1936USAmerican baseball player (1936-2017)
- Des Lockb. 1949NZNew Zealand rower
- Andrew Lockb. 1961AUAustralian Himalayan mountaineer
- Sean Lockb. 1963GBBritish comedian (1963–2021)
- Rob Lockb. 1966USAmerican basketball player (born 1966)
- Rebecca Lockb. 1976GBEnglish actress
- Georgia Lockb. 1996GBBritish actress, singer, presenter
- Drew Lockb. 1996USAmerican football player (born 1996)
- Sandey Lockactress
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 35 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.9K | #5,058 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.8K | #4,992 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.5K | #4,935 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 are other forms of the name Lock?
- In the etymology graph, Locke is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Lock mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Lockmaker; (ii) person living by a lockable enclosure; (iii) lock-keeper; (iv) medieval nickname for someone with fine curly hair; (v) Scottish and northern English variant of Lucas. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Lock?
- A machine transcription gives /lɑk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lock have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.9 thousand people named Lock, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lock.
- How common is the name Lock?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,936 people named Lock in 2010, about 1 in 48 thousand residents.
- How common is Lock compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Lock is the 907th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lock?
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/lockThe 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, “Lock” — the 907th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.