Merriam
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Merriams in Leeds, Yorkshire; first attested Laurence de Meryham 1296 SRSx
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛɹiəm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Merriam is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 119K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.4M
- CRCosta Rica1 in 5.1M
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
- 100 (measured from records)
- 1 in 119K (inferred from the name graph)
2,787 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Merriams in Leeds, Yorkshire; first attested Laurence de Meryham 1296 SRSx
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Merriam 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 | 2,787 | 1 in 119K | 2.8K | Merriam | 100 |
| CH Switzerland | 6 | 1 in 1.4M | 6 | — | 2 |
| PL Poland | 5 | 1 in 7.7M | 3 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 105M | — | Merriam | 5 |
| CR Costa Rica | 1 | 1 in 5.1M | 1 | — | 1 |
2,787 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Merriam is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, habitational name from Merriams in Leeds, Kent.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, 'person from Merriams', Kent.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- George Merriamb. 1803USAmerican publisher
- Clinton L. Merriamb. 1824USAmerican politician
- William Rush Merriamb. 1849USAmerican politician (1849–1931)
- Clinton Hart Merriamb. 1855USAmerican zoologist and ornithologist (1855-1942)
- Florence Augusta Merriam Baileyb. 1863USAmerican ornithologist, birdwatcher, and nature writer (1863 – 1948)
- Frank Merriamb. 1865USGovernor of California (1865-1955)
- Charles Edward Merriamb. 1874USAmerican political scientist (1874-1953)
- Charles Warren Merriamb. 1905USAmerican geologist and paleontologist (1905-1974)
- Charlotte Merriamb. 1906USAmerican actress
- Eve Merriamb. 1916USAmerican poet and writer (1916-1992)
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 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,322 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,765 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.7K | #11,195 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 6 | #89,778 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #276,778 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #365,754 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #28,167 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Merriam mean, and where does it come from?
- from Merriams in Leeds, Yorkshire; first attested Laurence de Meryham 1296 SRSx Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Merriam?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛɹiəm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Merriam have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Merriam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled merriam.
- Where is Merriam most common?
- Merriam is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 119 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Merriam?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,787 people named Merriam in 2010, about 1 in 119 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Merriam?
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/merriamThe 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, “Merriam”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.