Pottinger
surname · Latin script
Meaning: seller of potage, a thick soup or stew
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈpɑtɪŋɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pottinger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 77K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 286K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 16K
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
- 254 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
1,164 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
seller of potage, a thick soup or stew. The name represents
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pottinger 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 | — | 1,164 | 1 in 286K | 1.3K | Pottinger | 254 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 77K | 1.2K | Pottinger | 120 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 132K | — | Pottinger | 88 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 168K | — | Pottinger | 4 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 128K | — | Pottinger | 57 |
| JM Jamaica | #892 | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Pottinger | 15 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈87 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Pottinger | 39 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 1 | 1 in 54K | 1 | — | — |
| GD Grenada | — | 1 | 1 in 113K | 1 | — | 1 |
1,164 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 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Pottinger 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, from OFr potagier ‘a maker or seller of pottage’; first attested Walter le Potagier 1300 LoCt
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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)
- Henry Pottingerb. 1789GB1st Governor of Hong Kong (1789-1856)
- Eldred Pottingerb. 1811GBBritish artillerist and adventurer (1811–1843)
- Don Pottingerb. 1919GBBritish artist (1919-1986)
- Sonia Pottingerb. 1931JMJamaican reggae record producer (1931–2010)
- Allison Pottingerb. 1973USAmerican curler
- Matthew Pottingerb. 1973USAmerican journalist, Marine Corps officer, and former government official (born 1973)
- Doug Pottingerb. 1973USAmerican male curler
- Damien Pottingerb. 1982CACanadian soccer player (born 1982)
- Dave PottingerUSAmerican video game programmer
- Alan Pottingeractor
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 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,018 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.2K | #5,543 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #22,183 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 917 | #25,356 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 1 | #181 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #222 |
| 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 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
- Where does the name Pottinger come from?
- seller of potage, a thick soup or stew. The name represents Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Pottinger?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɑtɪŋɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Pottinger mean?
- Recorded meaning: seller of potage, a thick soup or stew.
- In which country does Pottinger have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Pottinger, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pottinger.
- How common is the name Pottinger?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,164 people named Pottinger in 2010, about 1 in 286 thousand residents.
- How common is Pottinger compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Pottinger is the 892nd most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pottinger?
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/pottingerThe 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, “Pottinger” — the 892nd most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.