Novis

surname · Latin script

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

Novis is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Sussex. nickname, occupational name from Middle English novice ‘learner; trainee priest’.

rarermore common
  • UYUruguay1 in 28K(measured from records)
  • BRBrazil1 in 519K
  • ESSpain1 in 676K

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.

Brazil (measured from records)

408 people

Sources
52 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 28K (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Main GB Location (1881): Sussex. nickname, occupational name from Middle English novice ‘learner; trainee priest’.

Sources 1

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Novis 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 Novis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil4081 in 519K408Novis52
US United States2091 in 1.6M209Novis29
UY Uruguay1211 in 28K121Novis11
ES Spain741 in 676K74Novis18
BE Belgium141 in 837K14—1

408 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)

Novis is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Czech surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia

    Also written Noviš

36 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)

Novis is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, novice, novitiate (person undergoing a trial period for entering a monastery)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Latin, dative/ablative masculine/feminine/neuter plural of novus

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Indonesian, novice

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1850190019502000Thomas Shephard Novis, b. 1874Donald Novis, b. 1906Emma Julietta Burnett, b. 1909Philip McCloy Novis, b. 1974

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 22 sources across 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Novis
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—408#20,389
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010209#88,685
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000204#85,297
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020197#98,501
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—121—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—74#33,963
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—74#33,924
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200814#59,708
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • 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 Novis mean, and where does it come from?
Main GB Location (1881): Sussex. nickname, occupational name from Middle English novice ‘learner; trainee priest’. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.
In which country does Novis have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 408 people named Novis, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled novis.
Where is Novis most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Novis is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 28 thousand people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Novis?
In Brazil, the national register counted 408 people named Novis, about 1 in 519 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Novis?

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

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, “Novis”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Novis parses inside a full name →