Purse
surname · Latin script
Meaning: OE purs ‘purse’, by metonymy for PURSER; first attested Hucche purs c1150 DC (L)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɝs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Purse is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
- 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)
OE purs ‘purse’, by metonymy for PURSER; first attested Hucche purs c1150 DC (L)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
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)
Purse is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A small bag for carrying money.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, kpavo, vowoli =
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Finnish, excess material that gushes or bursts out, such as plaster from under a brick
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Estonian, outburst
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Benjamin Ormond Purseb. 1874GBsocial worker and expert on blind welfare
- Jack Purseb. 1879AUAustralian rules footballer (1879-1953)
- Hugh Purseb. 1881AUAustralian rules footballer (1881-1952)
- John Purseb. 1972USAmerican bicycle motocross rider
- Darren Purseb. 1977GBEnglish footballer (born 1977)
- Bruce PurseUSAmerican musician, composer, arranger, bandleader and trumpet 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 10 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 581 | #10,093 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 423 | #52,889 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 389 | #50,468 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 381 | #54,178 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #198,654 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Purse mean, and where does it come from?
- OE purs ‘purse’, by metonymy for PURSER; first attested Hucche purs c1150 DC (L) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Purse?
- A machine transcription gives /pɝs/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Purse?
- In the etymology graph, Bolso is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Purse have the most bearers?
- Purse is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Purse?
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/purseThe 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, “Purse”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.