Métayer

surname · Latin script

Meaning: sharecropper, metayer

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 296K(measured from records)
  • ARArgentina1 in 711K
  • BEBelgium1 in 837K

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)

1,125 people, 2010

Sources
170 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 296K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Metayer in US United States, BE Belgium.

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)

sharecropper, metayer

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Métayer 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 Métayer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1,1251 in 296K1.3KMetayer170
AR Argentina641 in 711K64——
BE Belgium141 in 837K14Metayer1
ES Spain111 in 4.5M11—2
CH Switzerland71 in 1.2M7—4
CZ Czechia31 in 3.6M3——

1,125 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); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)

Métayer is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Metayer

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Metayer

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Chile, Dominican Republic

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Metayer

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Spain

    Languages: French, Arabic, Chinese

    Also written Metayer

  • Turkish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye

    Also written Metayer

9 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)

Métayer is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, de l’ancien français meiteier, un individu qui louait une terre et devait remettre la moitié des récoltes au propriétaire

    as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

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)

1850190019502000Georges Métayer, b. 1869Pierre Métayer, b. 1905René Métayer, b. 1912Alex Métayer, b. 1930Éric Métayer, b. 1958Lysiane Métayer, b. 1963Guillaume Métayer, b. 1972Fred, b. 1973Nina Métayer, b. 1988Clément Métayer, b. 1993

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 6 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Métayer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20247#79,838
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20084#118,880

Reference works 3

  • 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 Métayer mean, and where does it come from?
sharecropper, metayer Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Métayer?
In the etymology graph, Mediero is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Métayer have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Métayer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled metayer.
Where is Métayer most common?
Métayer is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 296 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Métayer?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,125 people named Métayer in 2010, about 1 in 296 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Métayer?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/m%C3%A9tayer

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, “Métayer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Métayer parses inside a full name →