Miles

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) from the Anglo-Norman male personal name Miles, from Germanic Milo; (ii) servant, from Latin miles 'soldier'; (iii) son of Miliel, an Old French contracted form of Michael

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/maɪlz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Miles is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 3.3K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.7K

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)

84,942 people, 2010

Sources
540 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Miles: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Miles
  1. GermanicMilo(measured from records)
  2. Latinmiles(measured from records)

(i) from the Anglo-Norman male personal name Miles, from Germanic Milo; (ii) servant, from Latin miles 'soldier'; (iii) son of Miliel, an Old French contracted form of Michael

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Miles 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.

Where Miles is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#33284,9421 in 3.9K85KMiles540
GB United Kingdom#232≈24,000 est.≈1 in 2.7K45Miles281
CA Canada#381≈8,600 est.≈1 in 4.4K71Miles205
IT Italy#599≈8,500 est.≈1 in 7.4K—Miles44
AU Australia#305≈7,700 est.≈1 in 3.3K382Miles203
NZ New Zealand#319≈1,300 est.≈1 in 3.7K66Miles109

84,942 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Miles is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Milés, Mïlés

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Mylae

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Milës

  • Greek surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Also written Mills, Mails, Μαιλς

80 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Miles 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 OFr Milon/Miles, OG Milo; also sometimes from Latin miles "soldier" or from Miel (see MICHAEL); first attested Milo 1086 DB

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • A name of unknown meaning. It was used in Ireland as the equivalent of Melaghlin, Maelmuire and Maolmordha. Meidhligh was a Derry form of Miles, recasting the name into Irish. Myles is a spelling variant. Milesius [Mile] (m) The legendary leader of the Celts’ or Milesians’ invasion of Ireland. He was called Mile Easpain, which may represent Latin Miles Hispaniae, ‘soldier of Spain’.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • occupational name for a servant or retainer, from Latin miles ‘soldier’, sometimes used as a technical term in this sense in medieval documents.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • [H311BEE0 John Miles or Myles (c. 162183), born probably in Herefordshire, England, was a pioneer American Baptist minister who emigrated to New England in 1662 and had a pastorate in Swansea, MA. Many of his descendants spell their name Myles.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • when not the same as 1 or 3, an Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Maolmhuire, Myles being used as the English equivalent of the Gaelic personal name Maol Muire (see Mullery).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

190019201940196019802000Bernard Miles, b. 1907Ken Miles, b. 1918Sylvia Miles, b. 1924Vera Miles, b. 1930Joanna Miles, b. 1940Sarah Miles, b. 1941Ben Miles, b. 1966Darius Miles, b. 1981Aaron Miles, b. 1983C. J. Miles, b. 1987

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)

FormalDear Miles,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 89 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Miles
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201085K#368
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202083K#379
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200082K#342

Reference works 7

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 Miles mean, and where does it come from?
(i) from the Anglo-Norman male personal name Miles, from Germanic Milo; (ii) servant, from Latin miles 'soldier'; (iii) son of Miliel, an Old French contracted form of Michael Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Miles have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 85 thousand people named Miles, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled miles.
How do you pronounce Miles?
A machine transcription gives /maɪlz/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Miles?
In the United States, the national register counted 84,942 people named Miles in 2010, about 1 in 3.9 thousand residents.
How common is Miles compared with other names?
In the United States, Miles is the 332nd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Miles?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/miles

The 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, “Miles” — the 332nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Miles parses inside a full name →