Parris

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) person from Paris, France, or a nickname linked with the city; (ii) from the personal name Paris, a form of Patrice/Patrick; (iii) from Catalan Aparici, from Spanish aparicion 'appearance'

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

/ˈpɛɹɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Parris 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 96th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 22K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 26K
  • CACanada≈1 in 33K

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)

12,710 people, 2010

Sources
400 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 261 (inferred from the name graph)

St. Kitts & Nevis

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Parris: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Parris
  1. CatalanAparici(measured from records)
  2. Spanishaparicion(measured from records)

(i) person from Paris, France, or a nickname linked with the city; (ii) from the personal name Paris, a form of Patrice/Patrick; (iii) from Catalan Aparici, from Spanish aparicion 'appearance'.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Where in the world(measured from records)

Parris 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 Parris is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—12,7101 in 26K13KParris400
GB United Kingdom—≈3,000 est.≈1 in 22K2.4KParris163
IT Italy—≈1,300 est.≈1 in 50K—Parris10
CA Canada—≈1,200 est.≈1 in 33K—Parris109
FI Finland—≈750 est.≈1 in 7.5K—Parris2
GY Guyana#966171 in 1.2K617Parris11
JM Jamaica#256≈390 est.≈1 in 7.2K—Parris10
KN St. Kitts & Nevis—2061 in 261206—11
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines—911 in 1.1K91—3
GD Grenada—841 in 1.3K84—6

12,710 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Parris is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Paraguay, Argentina, Panama

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Pàŗrîs

  • Greek surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States

    Also written Παρρης, Παρρής, Πάρρης

  • English (Trinidad & Tobago) surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Trinidad & Tobago, United States

    Also written Pärrís

55 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)

Parris is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, An English surname from the Celtic Parisi tribe of Yorkshire, the name of uncertain origin. Koch proposes derivation from Proto-Celtic *kʷert (“make, cause”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷer- (compare Welsh peri).

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

  • In Irish, An English name of dual derivation (from Paris, the city, and an abbreviation of Patricius). Rare in Ireland but associated with Youghal, Co. Cork, from early fourteenth century and later found also in Leinster. Parish is a variant of it—from Paris—not from the word parish. Pharis is a synonym of Farris not of Parris

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

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)

16001700180019002000Samuel Parris, b. 1653Elizabeth Parris, b. 1682Albion Parris, b. 1788Virgil D. Parris, b. 1807Stanford Parris, b. 1929Matthew Parris, b. 1949George Parris, b. 1964Teyonah Parris, b. 1987Nikita Parris, b. 1994Mason Parris, b. 1999

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)

FormalDear Mr Parris,
InformalHi Parris,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 46 sources across 28 countries.

Reference works 5

  • 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)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Parris mean, and where does it come from?
(i) person from Paris, France, or a nickname linked with the city; (ii) from the personal name Paris, a form of Patrice/Patrick; (iii) from Catalan Aparici, from Spanish aparicion 'appearance'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Parris?
A machine transcription gives /ˈpɛɹɪs/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Parris have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Parris, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled parris.
Where is Parris most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Parris is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 261 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Parris?
In the United States, the national register counted 12,710 people named Parris in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
How common is Parris compared with other names?
In Guyana, Parris is the 96th most common surname of 15,834 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Parris?

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

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, “Parris” — the 96th most common surname in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Parris parses inside a full name →