Priestley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈpɹistɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Priestley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 174K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 186K
- NONorway1 in 304K
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
- 17 (measured from records)
- 1 in 174K (inferred from the name graph)
1,914 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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 Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church'
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)
Priestley 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.
1,914 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Priestley is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, dweller by the priests’ wood or clearing; first attested Samson de Presteleia 1198 P (Beds)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Priscott see Prescott Prisley see Priestley ous minor places so called, especially the one in N Yorks.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, minor places so called, especially the one in N Yorks.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, J. B., English writer; Joseph,
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)
- Joseph Priestleyb. 1733GBEnglish chemist, theologian, educator, and political theorist (1733–1804)
- Raymond Priestleyb. 1886GBEnglish geologist, British Army officer and military historian (1886–1974)
- John Boynton Priestleyb. 1894GBEnglish writer (1894–1984)
- Robert Priestleyb. 1901USset decorator (1901-1986)
- Tom Priestleyb. 1932GBBritish film and sound editor (1932-2023)
- Chris Priestleyb. 1958GBchildren's author and illustrator
- Jason Priestleyb. 1969CACanadian-American actor and director (born 1969)
- Justine Priestleyb. 1969CACanadian actress
- Mark Priestleyb. 1976AUAustralian actor (1976-2008)
- Adam Priestleyb. 1990GBGibraltarian footballer (born 1990)
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 24 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2K | #14,592 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.9K | #15,325 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 36 | #56,419 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 36 | #55,528 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #37,447 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 18 | #45,088 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 7 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 7 | #168,415 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5 | #64,435 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #284,340 |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Priestley mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Priestley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɹistɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Priestley have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.9 thousand people named Priestley, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled priestley.
- Where is Priestley most common?
- Priestley is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 174 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Priestley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,914 people named Priestley in 2010, about 1 in 174 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Priestley?
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/priestleyThe 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, “Priestley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.