Quilter
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OFr cuilte, coilte ‘a quilt’; maker of quilts or mattresses; first attested Richard le cuilter c1 179 Bart (Lo)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈkwɪltə/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Quilter is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
- USUnited States
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 OFr cuilte, coilte ‘a quilt’; maker of quilts or mattresses; first attested Richard le cuilter c1 179 Bart (Lo)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Quilter 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, and mattresses, and also of the quilted garments worn in battle by those who could not afford armour made of metal, from an agent deriv. of ME, OF cuilte, coilte quilt, mattress (L culcita mattress).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A person whose hobby or profession is making quilts.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, 'maker of quilts and quilted garments'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Irish, Norman le cuilter (maker of quilts). This name has long been associated with north Kerry since the mediaeval period. The derivation from cutler is erroneous
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)- William Quilterb. 1808British accountant
- William Quilterb. 1841GBBritish politician (1841-1911)
- Harry Quilterb. 1851British journalist
- Sir Cuthbert Quilter, 2nd Baronetb. 1873GBBritish Baronet (1873-1952)
- Roger Quilterb. 1877GBBritish composer (1877–1953)
- Barney Quilterb. 1919USAmerican politician (1919-2005)
- Jeffrey Quilterb. 1949U.S. archaeologist and anthropologist
- Helene Quilterb. 1953NZNew Zealand public servant (1953–2026)
- Peter Quilterb. 1965GBBritish playwright
- Laura Quilterb. 1968USAmerican feminist
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1K | #6,480 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 685 | #35,388 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 647 | #34,878 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 591 | #35,916 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 13 | #105,312 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #19,326 |
| 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
- What does the name Quilter mean, and where does it come from?
- from OFr cuilte, coilte ‘a quilt’; maker of quilts or mattresses; first attested Richard le cuilter c1 179 Bart (Lo) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Quilter?
- In English /ˈkwɪltə/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Quilter have the most bearers?
- Quilter is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Quilter?
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/quilterThe 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, “Quilter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.