Rainwater
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicization of German Reinwasser, literally ‘pure water’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈɹeɪnˌwɔtɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rainwater is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 47K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 66K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 96K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 347 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)
7,111 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Anglicization of German Reinwasser, literally ‘pure water’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Rainwater 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 7,111 | 1 in 47K | 7.1K | Rainwater | 347 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Rainwater | 4 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Rainwater | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 96K | — | Rainwater | 22 |
| CA Canada | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Rainwater | 14 |
| SG Singapore | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Rainwater | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Rainwater | 1 |
7,111 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. 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)Rainwater 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, Rainfall.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, James, US physicist (Nobel 1975}
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)- Leo James Rainwaterb. 1917USAmerican physicist
- Marvin Rainwaterb. 1925USAmerican country and rockabilly singer and songwriter (1925-2013)
- Lee Rainwaterb. 1928USAmerican sociologist (1928-2015)
- Richard Rainwaterb. 1944USAmerican businessman (1944–2015)
- Gregg Rainwaterb. 1966USAmerican actor
- Rotimi Rainwaterb. 1970USAmerican writer
- Caitlin Dewey RainwaterUSAmerican journalist
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)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.1K | #4,949 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.9K | #4,710 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.8K | #4,978 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Rainwater mean, and where does it come from?
- Anglicization of German Reinwasser, literally ‘pure water’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Rainwater?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹeɪnˌwɔtɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rainwater have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.1 thousand people named Rainwater, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rainwater.
- How common is the name Rainwater?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,111 people named Rainwater in 2010, about 1 in 47 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rainwater?
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/rainwaterThe 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, “Rainwater”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.