Potton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Potton, Bedfordshire; first attested Hugh de Potton 1227 Black (Glasgow)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/pɒʈən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Potton is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- NZNew Zealand
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from Potton, Bedfordshire; first attested Hugh de Potton 1227 Black (Glasgow)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world
(measured from records)Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)Potton is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, called from OE pott pot + tiin enclosure, settlement. The significance of the first element is not clear; this may have been a place where pots were made, or the word may have been used in a topographical sense of a hollow depression.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, called from OE pott pot + tun enclosure, settlement. The significance of the first element is not clear; this may have been a place where pots were made, or the word may have been used in a topographical sense of a hollow depression.
as a nameA dictionary of 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)- Jean-François Pottonb. 1951FRFrench official and historian
- Craig Pottonb. 1953NZNew Zealand photographer (born 1952)
- Jean-Christophe Pottonb. 1960FRFrench diplomat
- Fay Pottonb. 1976GBBritish biathlete
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)9 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 672 | #9,016 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #382,385 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Potton mean, and where does it come from?
- from Potton, Bedfordshire; first attested Hugh de Potton 1227 Black (Glasgow) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Potton?
- A machine transcription gives /pɒʈən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Potton have the most bearers?
- Potton is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
What do you want to know about Potton?
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/pottonThe 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, “Potton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.