Purves
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Purves is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: Variant of Purvis.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- CACanada
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)
Variant of Purvis.
Sources 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested in 1 language 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Austin M. Purves, Jr.b. 1900USAmerican artist and educator (1900-1977)
- Charlie Purvesb. 1921GBBritish association football player (1921-2013)
- Roger Purvesb. 1935CAPh.D. University of California, Berkeley 1963
- James Purvesb. 1937GBcricketer (born 1937)
- Peter Purvesb. 1939GBEnglish actor and television presenter
- Jane Purvesb. 1949CACanadian politician (1949–2013)
- Libby Purvesb. 1950GBradio presenter, journalist and author
- Barry Purvesb. 1955GBEnglish animator, film director and puppet motion screenwriter
- John Purvesb. 1968CACanadian ice hockey player
- Alex PurvesGBScottish rugby union 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.3K | #5,224 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 698 | #34,864 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 630 | #34,071 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 587 | #37,848 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 84 | #17,186 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 70 | #33,137 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 34 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 13 | #105,312 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7 | #79,838 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #102,856 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #383,824 |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Purves mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant of Purvis. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Purves have the most bearers?
- Purves is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Purves?
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/purvesThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Purves”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.