Locke
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Locke is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Variant of Lock; also related to Lucas in Scotland and northern England.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 8.9K
- CACanada≈1 in 9.1K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 465 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Variant of Lock; also related to Lucas in Scotland and northern England.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Locke 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | Locke | 11 |
| US United States | — | 27,643 | 1 in 12K | 28K | Locke | 465 |
| GB United Kingdom | #803 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | listed | Locke | 218 |
| CA Canada | #872 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | 4 | Locke | 172 |
| AU Australia | #868 | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | 1 | Locke | 167 |
| IE Ireland | #792 | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Locke | 43 |
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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Locke 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.
habitational name from any of various places called Loock, from look ‘enclosure’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, An English surname — famously held by
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, John, English philosopher; Sondra,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, US actress
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, This English name of dual derivation (locative, or of nickname type from lock of hair) is in Ireland since the sixteenth century, when it is on record as that of tenants and yeomen; but, though now fairly numerous, it has never been particularly identified with any specific area. In at least one well-known case (Joseph Locke, the singer) it has been used instead of O'Loughlin
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Matthew Lockeb. 1621GBEnglish Baroque composer
- John Lockeb. 1632GBEnglish philosopher and physician (1632-1704)
- Alain Lockeb. 1885USAmerican philosopher and writer (1885–1954)
- Katherine Lockeb. 1910BYAmerican actress (1910-1995)
- Philip Lockeb. 1928GBBritish actor (1928–2004)
- Gary Lockeb. 1950USAmerican politician
- Gary Lockeb. 1954GBprofessional footballer (born 1954)
- Tembi Lockeb. 1970USAmerican actress
- Spencer Lockeb. 1991USAmerican actress
- Joe Lockeb. 2003IMManx actor
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 37 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 28K | #1,272 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 27K | #1,210 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 26K | #1,337 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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 Locke mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant of Lock; also related to Lucas in Scotland and northern England. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Locke?
- In the etymology graph, Lock is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Locke have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 153 thousand people named Locke in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled locke.
- How common is the name Locke?
- In the United States, the national register counted 27,643 people named Locke in 2010, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
- How common is Locke compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Locke is the 792nd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Locke?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lockeThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Locke” — the 792nd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.