Pinkerton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Pinkerton, East Lothian; place-name of uncertain origin and meaning
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈpɪŋkɝtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pinkerton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 39K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 83K
- ESSpain1 in 4.5M
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 6 (measured from records)
- 1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)
8,446 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Reference-verified
United States
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)
person from Pinkerton, East Lothian; place-name of uncertain origin and meaning
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)
Pinkerton 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 | 8,446 | 1 in 39K | 8.4K | Pinkerton | 6 |
| ES Spain | 11 | 1 in 4.5M | 11 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 9 | 1 in 83K | 9 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 2 | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
| RU Russia | — | — | — | Pinkerton | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | — | 691 | Pinkerton | 5 |
8,446 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Pinkerton 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 English, Origin unclear; likely a personal name with Scots -ton “settlement, farm”, also from the old barony in East Lothian. Nicol de Pynkertone recorded in 1296.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, A habitational surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Allan, US detective
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- John Pinkertonb. 1758GBBritish antiquarian (1758-1826)
- Allan Pinkertonb. 1819USScottish-American civil war detective and spy
- David Pinkertonb. 1836NZNew Zealand politician
- Kathrene Pinkertonb. 1887USAmerican author (1887-1967)
- Henry Pinkertonb. 1915GBFootballer (1915-1986)
- Bill Pinkertonb. 1932GBassociation football player (born 1932)
- Nancy Pinkertonb. 1940USAmerican actress (1940-2010)
- Mike Pinkertonb. 1950USAmerican open source programmer
- James Pinkertonb. 1958USAmerican writer and political analyst
- Ryan Pinkertonb. 2005USAmerican cyclist
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.4K | #4,195 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.2K | #3,993 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.9K | #4,339 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 691 | #8,831 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 11 | #114,632 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 9 | #616 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #379,975 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Pinkerton mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Pinkerton, East Lothian; place-name of uncertain origin and meaning Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Pinkerton?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɪŋkɝtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pinkerton have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.4 thousand people named Pinkerton, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pinkerton.
- Where is Pinkerton most common?
- Pinkerton is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 39 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Pinkerton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,446 people named Pinkerton in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pinkerton?
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/pinkertonThe 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, “Pinkerton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.