Sawyer
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sawyer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Person whose job is sawing wood; woodcutter.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 6.7K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 506 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
49,028 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iceland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person whose job is sawing wood; woodcutter.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sawyer 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 | #598 | 49,028 | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | Sawyer | 506 |
| GB United Kingdom | #504 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 10K | Sawyer | 216 |
| CA Canada | #667 | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | 53 | Sawyer | 190 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Sawyer | 22 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Sawyer | 15 |
| AU Australia | #685 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | 1 | Sawyer | 161 |
| NZ New Zealand | #507 | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | 11 | Sawyer | 66 |
| IE Ireland | #642 | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Sawyer | 28 |
| IS Iceland | #654 | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | 1 | Sawyer | 3 |
49,028 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Sawyer 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 ME saghe, sawe ‘to saw’; a sawyer of timber, especially in a saw-pit; first attested Nicholas le Sagyere c1248 Bec (Berks)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, earned his living from sawing wood, ME saghier, an agent deriv. of sagh(en) to saw (from OE sagu a saw); for the inserted glide, cf. Bowyer. The ME word absorbed the ANF term for a sawyer, syour (see Sewer 3). Sayman see Seaman Saywell see Sewell
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, One who saws timber, especially in a sawpit.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Diane, US TV journalist; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Old English; a sawer of wood
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Philetus Sawyerb. 1816USAmerican politician (1816–1900)
- Charles W. Sawyerb. 1887USAmerican politician (1887–1979)
- Helen Sawyer Hoggb. 1905USastronomer (1905-1993)
- Joe Sawyerb. 1906CACanadian actor (1906–1982)
- Connie Sawyerb. 1912USAmerican actress (1912-2018)
- Grant Sawyerb. 1918USDemocratic Governor of Nevada, 1959 to 1967 (1918–1996)
- Diane Sawyerb. 1945USAmerican journalist
- Amos Sawyerb. 1945LRLiberian politician (1945–2022)
- Robert J. Sawyerb. 1960CACanadian science fiction writer (born 1960)
- Hartley Sawyerb. 1985USAmerican actor
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 45 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 49K | #707 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 48K | #646 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 47K | #718 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 10K | #754 |
| 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 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Sawyer mean, and where does it come from?
- Person whose job is sawing wood; woodcutter. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Sawyer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 49 thousand people named Sawyer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sawyer.
- How common is the name Sawyer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 49,028 people named Sawyer in 2010, about 1 in 6.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Sawyer compared with other names?
- In the United States, Sawyer is the 598th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sawyer?
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/sawyerThe 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, “Sawyer” — the 598th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.