Marais
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: swamp, marsh
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/maʁɛ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Marais is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in France.
- ZASouth Africa
- FRFrance
- AUAustralia
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)
A marsh; a marshy area, one intermittently covered with water, particularly in Louisiana, or in other French-speaking areas.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Marais is read(measured from records)
Marais is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French44%
swamp, marsh
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English39%
A marsh; a marshy area, one intermittently covered with water, particularly in Louisiana, or in other French-speaking areas.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
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)
Marais 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 Afrikaans, French Huguenot surname; means "marsh".
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Portuguese, second-person plural present indicative of marar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swahili, plural of rais
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)
- Marin Maraisb. 1656FRFrench composer and viol player (1656–1728)
- Eugène Maraisb. 1871ZASouth African lawyer, naturalist, poet and writer (1871–1936)
- Jean Maraisb. 1913FRFrench actor and theatre director (1913-1998)
- Marais Viljoenb. 1915ZASouth African politician (1915-2007)
- Jaap Maraisb. 1923ZASouth African politician
- Wessel Maraisb. 1929ZASouth African botanist (1929–2013)
- Peter Maraisb. 1948ZASouth African politician
- Pia Maraisb. 1971ZASouth African film director and screenwriter
- Jessica Maraisb. 1985ZASouth African-born Australian actress (born 1985)
- Lejeanne Maraisb. 1989ZAfigure skater
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 29 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.6K | #2,406 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 1.1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 1K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 927 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 911 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 904 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 807 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 803 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 790 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 613 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 558 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 431 | #52,071 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Marais?
- A machine transcription gives /maʁɛ/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Marais mean?
- In French, swamp, marsh
- Where does the name Marais come from?
- A marsh; a marshy area, one intermittently covered with water, particularly in Louisiana, or in other French-speaking areas. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Marais have the most bearers?
- Marais is most frequently recorded in France.
What do you want to know about Marais?
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/maraisThe 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, “Marais”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.