Longstaff
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘long staff,’ probably a nickname for a bailiff, catchpoll, or other officer of the law; first attested Richard Langstaf 1210 P (We)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɫɔŋˌstæf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Longstaff is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ARArgentina1 in 494K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 683K
- USUnited States1 in 703K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 5 (measured from records)
- 1 in 494K (inferred from the name graph)
473 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Argentina
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘long staff,’ probably a nickname for a bailiff, catchpoll, or other officer of the law; first attested Richard Langstaf 1210 P (We)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Longstaff 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.
473 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Longstaff is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, apparently an occupational name for a tipstaff or beadle who carried a long staff as a badge of office; perhaps also a nickname for a very tall, thin man, or even an obscene nickname for a man with a long sexual organ. The surname is found chiefly in northeastern England.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Lorat see Lawrence tipstaff or beadle who carried a long staff as a badge of office; perhaps also a nickname for a very tall, thin man, or even an obscene nickname for a man with a long sexual organ. The surname is found chiefly in NE England.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A surname transferred from the nickname.
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)
- Llewellyn W. Longstaffb. 1841GBEnglish industrialist and member of the Royal Geographical Society
- George Blundell Longstaffb. 1849British entomologist and physician (1849-1921)
- John Longstaffb. 1861AUAustralian painter (1861-1941)
- Bert Longstaffb. 1885GBEnglish footballer (1885-1969)
- Ronald Earl Longstaffb. 1941USUnited States federal judge
- Francis Longstaffb. 1956USAmerican professor of insurance and finance
- Joshua Longstaffb. 1982USAmerican basketball coach
- Sean Longstaffb. 1997GBEnglish association football player (born 1997)
- Matty Longstaffb. 2000GBEnglish footballer
- Abie Longstaffb. 2000GBAustralian children's book author
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 17 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 486 | #47,112 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 473 | #45,253 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 455 | #44,497 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 92 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 27 | #69,482 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 27 | #67,696 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #61,909 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #274,088 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #272,900 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #80,541 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Longstaff mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘long staff,’ probably a nickname for a bailiff, catchpoll, or other officer of the law; first attested Richard Langstaf 1210 P (We) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Longstaff?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɔŋˌstæf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Longstaff have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 473 people named Longstaff, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled longstaff.
- Where is Longstaff most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Longstaff is densest in Argentina — about 1 in 494 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Longstaff?
- In the United States, the national register counted 473 people named Longstaff in 2010, about 1 in 703 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Longstaff?
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/longstaffThe 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, “Longstaff”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.