Payton
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Payton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 21st most common surname. Recorded meaning: ‘person from Peyton’, Sussex (‘PSga’s settlement’).
- USUnited States1 in 14K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 16K
- LRLiberia≈1 in 2.8K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Payton itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 447 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈76,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Liberia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Peyton in IE Ireland, DZ Algeria, CN China.
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)
‘person from Peyton’, Sussex (‘PSga’s settlement’).
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Payton 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 | — | ≈76,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Peyton | 10 |
| US United States | #859 | 23,670 | 1 in 14K | 69K | Payton | 447 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 2.3K | Payton | 151 |
| LR Liberia | #21 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Payton | 2 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Peyton | 2 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Peyton | 43 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Payton 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, from Peyton, Essex, Suffolk; first attested Matthew de Peytun 1240 FFEss
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Old English; from the settlement of Pæga.
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, (so called from the OE personal name Paga + OE tun en¬ closure, settlement) or from some other place similarly named. The surname is common in the W Midlands. Peyton in Essex has probably not contributed; it is re¬ corded in Domesday Book as Pachenhou ‘ridge, spur (see Hoe) of Pac(c)a’, and even in the i6th cent, it was still Pakenho or Patenhall. Collectives (of i): Prov.: Laperiere. Sp.: Pereda.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from Peyton in Sussex, probably named in Old English as 192 ; ‘Pega’s settlement’. Payton Place was the collective name of a novel by Mazo de la Roche, which was the basis for an American television soap opera in the 1950S. Variant: Peyton.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A habitational surname from Old English.
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)
- Barbara Paytonb. 1927USAmerican actress (1927-1967)
- Gary Paytonb. 1948USAmerican astronaut
- Walter Paytonb. 1954USAmerican football running back, Pro Football Hall of Famer (1954-1999)
- Sean Paytonb. 1963USAmerican football coach and player (born 1963)
- Gary Paytonb. 1968USAmerican basketball player (born 1968)
- Khary Paytonb. 1972USAmerican actor
- Jay Paytonb. 1972USAmerican baseball player
- Nicholas Paytonb. 1973USAmerican musician
- Gary Payton IIb. 1992USAmerican basketball player
- Elfrid Paytonb. 1994USAmerican basketball player (born 1994)
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 48 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 24K | #1,515 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 23K | #1,440 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,549 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.3K | #3,251 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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)
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
- In which country does Payton have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 76 thousand people named Payton in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled peyton.
- What does the name Payton mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Peyton’, Sussex (‘PSga’s settlement’). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Payton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 23,670 people named Payton in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Payton compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Payton is the 21st most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Payton?
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/paytonThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Payton” — the 21st most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.