Read

Locally spelled Reed in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IE Ireland and 2 more and Reid in AU Australia, CA Canada, NZ New Zealand and 1 more.

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.

• English:/riːd/●(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Read, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

• Art
• Artie
• Jordan
• Arthur
• Bella

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Read 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, from OE rēad 'red' (complexion or hair); first attested Leofwine se Reade 1016–20 OEByn.

  as a name·A Dictionary of English Surnames

• In English, To look at and interpret letters or other information that is written.

  as a word·kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

• In English, v., ke = ge, kele; gel, léi

  as a word·Vocabulary of the Mende Language

• American, Scottish, and English: transferred use of the English surname. In most cases, this originated as a nickname for someone with red hair or a ruddy complexion (from Old English r ad red; cf. REID ). In other cases, it may have arisen as a local name, from Old English hr od reeds or r od cleared land.

  as a word

• In Estonian, nominative plural of rida

  as a word·kaikki.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.

• George Readb. 1733USAmerican politician (1733-1798)
• Herbert Readb. 1893GBEnglish anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art (1893-1968)
• Mary Readb. 2005GBEnglish pirate

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).

44 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 27 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

What does the name Read mean, and where does it come from?

(i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].

How do you pronounce Read?

In English /riːd/ (Wiktionary).

How common is the name Read?

In the United States, the national register counted 277,030 people named Reed in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.

How common is Read compared with other names?

In the United States, Read is the 36th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

Which countries have the most people with the surname Read?

In the United States, the national register counted about 277 thousand people named Reed, more than in any other country we hold. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.