Nurse
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OFr nurice ‘nurse’; first attested Joan Nurys, Magota le Nuris 1379 PTY; see NORRIS, NORRISH
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nɝs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nurse is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Guyana it is the 83rd most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 40K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 68K
- USUnited States1 in 119K
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)
- Sources
- 301 (measured from records)
- 1 in 931 (inferred from the name graph)
2,786 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OFr nurice ‘nurse’; first attested Joan Nurys, Magota le Nuris 1379 PTY; see NORRIS, NORRISH
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nurse 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 2,786 | 1 in 119K | 3K | Nurse | 301 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 40K | 2.9K | Nurse | 161 |
| GY Guyana | #83 | 806 | 1 in 931 | 806 | Nurse | 9 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Nurse | 111 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Nurse | 24 |
| JM Jamaica | #565 | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Nurse | 6 |
| GD Grenada | — | 30 | 1 in 3.8K | 30 | — | 1 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 5 | 1 in 11K | 5 | — | 1 |
2,786 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Nurse 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, A person involved in providing direct care for the sick:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, a different form of Norris (ii)
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
variant of Norris 3.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In enm, alternative form of norice
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Aukle
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Rebecca Nurseb. 1621USConvicted of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials (1621-1692)
- Seymour Nurseb. 1933BBBarbadian cricketer (1933-2019)
- Paul Nurseb. 1949GBNobel prize winning British biochemist
- Richard Nurseb. 1966CACanadian football player
- Nick Nurseb. 1967USAmerican basketball coach
- Chris Nurseb. 1984GBEnglish footballer (born 1984)
- Sarah Nurseb. 1995CACanadian ice hockey player
- Darnell Nurseb. 1995CACanadian ice hockey player
- Kia Nurseb. 1996CACanadian basketball player (born 1996)
- Jess NurseUSactress
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 30 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3K | #10,278 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.9K | #2,659 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,327 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.5K | #11,530 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 806 | #118 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 30 | #193 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 5 | #177 |
| 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Nurse mean, and where does it come from?
- from OFr nurice ‘nurse’; first attested Joan Nurys, Magota le Nuris 1379 PTY; see NORRIS, NORRISH Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Nurse?
- A machine transcription gives /nɝs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nurse have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Nurse, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nurse.
- Where is Nurse most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nurse is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 931 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nurse?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,786 people named Nurse in 2010, about 1 in 119 thousand residents.
- How common is Nurse compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Nurse is the 83rd most common surname of 15,834 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nurse?
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/nurseThe 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, “Nurse” — the 83rd most common surname in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.