Muir
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Person who lives on or near a moor; from a Scottish variant of Middle English more
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mjʊəɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Muir is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.9K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.4K
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
- 413 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈32,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person who lives on or near a moor; from a Scottish variant of Middle English more.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Muir 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 | — | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Muir | 8 |
| US United States | — | 11,130 | 1 in 30K | 11K | Muir | 413 |
| GB United Kingdom | #541 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | 4 | Muir | 245 |
| AU Australia | #445 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Muir | 185 |
| CA Canada | #998 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Muir | 183 |
| NZ New Zealand | #338 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Muir | 108 |
| JM Jamaica | #495 | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Muir | 18 |
| GY Guyana | — | 75 | 1 in 10K | 75 | — | 3 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Muir 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, 'dweller by the moor'; chiefly Scottish; first attested Thomas de la More 1291 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
topographic name for someone who lived on a moor, from a Scots form of Middle English more ‘moor’, ‘fen’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A moor.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, John, US naturalist; glacier, AK;
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Edwin, Scottish poet and critic;
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- William Muirb. 1819GBScottish Orientalist and colonial administrator (1819–1905)
- John Muirb. 1838USScottish-American naturalist (1838–1914)
- Edwin Muirb. 1887GBBritish poet, novelist and translator (1887-1959)
- Gavin Muirb. 1900USAmerican actor (1900-1972)
- Esther Muirb. 1903USAmerican actress (1903-1995)
- Jean Muirb. 1911USAmerican actress and educator (1911–1996)
- Helen Muirb. 1920GBBritish biochemist (1920–2005)
- David Muirb. 1973USAmerican broadcast journalist
- Tamsyn Muirb. 1985NZauthor of fantasy, science fiction, and horror; most notably Gideon the Ninth
- Laura Muirb. 1993GBBritish middle- and long-distance runner
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 37 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,123 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,245 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #3,060 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 75 | #550 |
| 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 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
- What does the name Muir mean, and where does it come from?
- Person who lives on or near a moor; from a Scottish variant of Middle English more. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Muir?
- A machine transcription gives /mjʊəɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Muir have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Muir in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled muir.
- How common is the name Muir?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,130 people named Muir in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
- How common is Muir compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Muir is the 338th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Muir?
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/muirThe 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, “Muir” — the 338th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.