Rudder
surname · Latin script
Meaning: An underwater vane used to steer a vessel
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɹʌdɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rudder is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 6.6K(measured from records)
- GDGrenada1 in 28K
- USUnited States1 in 122K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 41 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)
2,719 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
An underwater vane used to steer a vessel. The rudder is controlled by means of a wheel, tiller or other apparatus (modern vessels can be controlled even with a joystick or an autopilot).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rudder 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 | 2,719 | 1 in 122K | 2.7K | Rudder | 41 |
| GY Guyana | 114 | 1 in 6.6K | 114 | — | — |
| GD Grenada | 4 | 1 in 28K | 4 | — | — |
| MX Mexico | — | — | — | Rudder | 7 |
| AR Argentina | — | — | — | Rudder | 11 |
| DO Dominican Republic | — | — | — | Rudder | 5 |
| PA Panama | — | — | — | Rudder | 2 |
2,719 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Rudder is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, alternative form of rother (“bovine”)
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)
- Samuel Rudderb. 1726British printer
- Bernhard de Rudderb. 1864DEGerman civil servant (1864–1929)
- Stephen Rudderb. 1872BBBarbadian cricketer
- James Earl Rudderb. 1910USRecipient of the Purple Heart medal (1910-1970)
- Virginia Love Longb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican journalist and poet
- Iris Rudderb. 1950USAmerican politician
- David Rudderb. 1953TTTrinidad and Tobago musician
- Scott Rudderb. 1969USMember of the New Jersey General Assembly
- Christian Rudderb. 1975USAmerican humorist
- Steven R. RudderUSAmerican Marine Corps general
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 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.7K | #11,560 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,923 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.5K | #11,926 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 114 | #511 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 4 | #219 |
| 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
- Where does the name Rudder come from?
- An underwater vane used to steer a vessel. The rudder is controlled by means of a wheel, tiller or other apparatus (modern vessels can be controlled even with a joystick or an autopilot). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Rudder?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹʌdɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Rudder mean?
- Recorded meaning: An underwater vane used to steer a vessel.
- What are other forms of the name Rudder?
- In the etymology graph, Ruder is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Rudder have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Rudder, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rudder.
- Where is Rudder most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rudder is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 6.6 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Rudder?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,719 people named Rudder in 2010, about 1 in 122 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rudder?
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/rudderThe 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, “Rudder”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.