Nelson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: English patronymic of Neil, ‘son of Neil’; later adopted as a given name after Lord Nelson’s victories
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nɛlsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nelson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 3rd most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 783(measured from records)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 789
- CNChina≈1 in 809
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)
- #211 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 627 (measured from records)
- 1 in 775 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,700,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
English patronymic of Neil, ‘son of Neil’; later adopted as a given name after Lord Nelson’s victories.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nelson 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 | — | ≈1,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 809 | — | Nelson | 43 |
| US United States | #40 | 424,958 | 1 in 783 | 425K | Nelson | 627 |
| NG Nigeria | #372 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Nelson | 101 |
| GB United Kingdom | #74 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Nelson | 314 |
| EG Egypt | #808 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Nelson | 34 |
| CA Canada | #33 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 868 | 4 | Nelson | 279 |
| NZ New Zealand | #50 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 789 | — | Nelson | 142 |
| GY Guyana | — | 968 | 1 in 775 | 968 | — | 11 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #3 | — | — | — | Nelson | 6 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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)
Nelson 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 German, English patronymic surname in -son, 'son of Neil/Nel'.
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, son of Nell; first attested John, Robert Nelleson 1324 Wak (Y), 1332 SRCu
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In German, Jewish, likely from Katzenellenbogensohn; also English from Cornelius
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, son of Neil; also linked with Admiral Horatio Nelson
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, go back to the same original Ir. personal name, Niall (see Neil).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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)
- Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelsonb. 1758GBBritish admiral (1758–1805)
- Ralph Nelsonb. 1916USAmerican film and television director (1916–1987)
- Barry Nelsonb. 1917USAmerican actor (1917–2007)
- Willie Nelsonb. 1933USAmerican country musician (born 1933)
- Ben E. Kingb. 1938USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer (1938–2015)
- Ricky Nelsonb. 1940USAmerican musician and actor (1940–1985)
- Bill Nelsonb. 1942USAmerican politician and attorney (born 1942)
- Craig T. Nelsonb. 1944USAmerican actor and comedian (born 1944)
- Princeb. 1958USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician (1958–2016)
- Eva Marieb. 1984USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler
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 144 sources across 74 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 425K | #43 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 412K | #40 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 411K | #44 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 968 | #95 |
Reference works 9
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Nelson mean, and where does it come from?
- English patronymic of Neil, ‘son of Neil’; later adopted as a given name after Lord Nelson’s victories. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- How do you pronounce Nelson?
- A machine transcription gives /nɛlsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nelson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 million people named Nelson in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nelson.
- Where is Nelson most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nelson is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 775 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nelson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 424,958 people named Nelson in 2010, about 1 in 783 residents.
- How common is Nelson compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Nelson is the 3rd most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nelson?
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/nelsonThe 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, “Nelson” — the 3rd most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.