Pinson
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) person who works with pincers or forceps; (ii) medieval nickname for a cheerful jaunty person; (iii) ‘son of Pine’, from Yiddish Pinkhes < Hebrew Pinechas
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈpɪnsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pinson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. In Panama it is the 23rd most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 45K(measured from records)
- COColombia≈1 in 886as Pinzon
- PAPanama≈1 in 1.9Kas Pinzon
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 Pinson 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.
- Colombia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 343 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈55,000 named Pinzon, 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 Pinzon in CO Colombia, VE Venezuela, PA Panama and 1 more.
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)
(i) person who works with pincers or forceps; (ii) medieval nickname for a cheerful jaunty person; (iii) ‘son of Pine’, from Yiddish Pinkhes < Hebrew Pinechas
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pinson is read(measured from records)
Pinson is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English69%
(i) person who works with pincers or forceps; (ii) medieval nickname for a cheerful jaunty person; (iii) ‘son of Pine’, from Yiddish Pinkhes < Hebrew Pinechas
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- French18%
a finch
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pinson in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pinson 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | #118 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 886 | 34 | Pinzon | 170 |
| US United States | — | 7,362 | 1 in 45K | 7.4K | Pinson | 343 |
| FR France | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 596 | — | 6 |
| VE Venezuela | #647 | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Pinzon | 34 |
| GT Guatemala | #282 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Pinzon | 30 |
| PA Panama | #23 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 41 | Pinzon | 58 |
| LR Liberia | #151 | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 7K | — | Pinson | 1 |
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; the co-datosgov-candidates register; Tribunal Electoral — Boletín, postulaciones for the 5 May 2024 general election; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Isabelle Pinsonb. 1769FRFrench genre painter and portraitist (1769-1855)
- Boris Pinsonb. 1892BYpolitician
- Pierre Pinsonb. 1913FRFrench Righteous Among the Nations
- Barbara Guestb. 1920USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (1920–2006)
- Vada Pinsonb. 1938USAmerican baseball player and coach
- Josiane Pinsonb. 1957FRFrench actress
- Julie Pinsonb. 1967USAmerican actress
- Lucie Pinsonb. 1985FRFrench environmentalist
- Theo Pinsonb. 1995USAmerican basketball player (born 1995)
- Virgile Pinsonb. 1996FRFrench association football player
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 25 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.4K | #4,800 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.2K | #4,523 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.9K | #4,948 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 868 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 767 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 734 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 692 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 690 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 596 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 572 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 565 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 474 | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Pinson mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person who works with pincers or forceps; (ii) medieval nickname for a cheerful jaunty person; (iii) ‘son of Pine’, from Yiddish Pinkhes < Hebrew Pinechas Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Pinson?
- In the etymology graph, Finch is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Pinson?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɪnsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pinson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 55 thousand people named Pinzon in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Pinson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,362 people named Pinson in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Pinson compared with other names?
- In Colombia, Pinson is the 118th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pinson?
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/pinsonThe 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, “Pinson” — the 118th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.