Poore
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Obsolete spelling of poor
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈpuɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Poore is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 36K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 40K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 13K
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
- 331 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
8,240 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Obsolete spelling of poor.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Poore 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 | 8,240 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Poore | 331 |
| KE Kenya | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Poore | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 1.1K | Poore | 126 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Poore | 1 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Poore | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Poore | 14 |
8,240 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 2000; 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)
Poore is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Different form of Power.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Richard Pooreb. 1200GBBishop of Durham
- Benjamin Perley Pooreb. 1820USAmerican newspaper editor (1820-1887)
- Henry Rankin Pooreb. 1859USAmerican artist (1859–1940)
- Robert Pooreb. 1866GBEnglish officer and cricketer (1866-1938)
- Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamiltonb. 1878GBnot in their usual nameBritish noble and activist (1878–1951)
- Dennis Pooreb. 1916GBBritish racing driver
- Matt Pooreb. 1930NZNew Zealand cricketer (1930-2020)
- David Pooreb. 1966GBBritish composer
- Meshea Pooreb. 1975USAmerican lawyer and politician
- Vern Pooreb. 2000USSound engineer
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 16 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.3K | #3,922 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.2K | #4,315 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.8K | #4,423 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.1K | #6,234 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- What does the name Poore mean, and where does it come from?
- Obsolete spelling of poor. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Poore?
- In the etymology graph, Poor is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Poore?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpuɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Poore have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.2 thousand people named Poore, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled poore.
- How common is the name Poore?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,240 people named Poore in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Poore?
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/pooreThe 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, “Poore”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.