Scale
org · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Scale is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 145 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Pembrokes; London. locative name from northern Middle English scale, sc(h)ole (cf. southern shale, s(c)hele) ‘(temporary) hut, shed, shieling’ (Old Scandinavian skáli).
- AUAustralia≈1 in 360Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 490Kfew records
- CACanada≈1 in 660Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 128 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 363K (inferred from the name graph)
145 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Main GB Location (1881): Pembrokes; London. locative name from northern Middle English scale, sc(h)ole (cf. southern shale, s(c)hele) ‘(temporary) hut, shed, shieling’ (Old Scandinavian skáli). The surname may be for someone who lived in a hut (especially a shepherd in a shieling), or for someone from one of several mostly minor places so named, with modern forms Scale and Schole, chiefly in N England.
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Scale is found
(measured from records)Scale 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 | 145 | 1 in 2.3M | 197 | Scale | 128 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 495K | 230 | Scale | 67 |
| AU Australia | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 363K | — | Scale | 39 |
| CA Canada | ≈63 est. | ≈1 in 659K | — | Scale | 31 |
| IN India | ≈55 est. | ≈1 in 26M | 1 | Scale | 8 |
| AR Argentina | 38 | 1 in 1.2M | 38 | — | — |
| IT Italy | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | listed | — | 5 |
145 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the xinhua-italian-manual register. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Doug Scaleb. 1954Australian rules footballer
- John Dymoke ScaleGBPeerage person ID=295583
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)13 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Scale mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): Pembrokes; London. locative name from northern Middle English scale, sc(h)ole (cf. southern shale, s(c)hele) ‘(temporary) hut, shed, shieling’ (Old Scandinavian skáli). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Scale?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 145 people named Scale, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled scale. After it come United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and India; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Scale?
- In the United States, the national register counted 145 people named Scale in 2010, about 1 in 2.3 million residents.
What do you want to know about Scale?
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/scaleThe 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, “Scale” — ranked 95567th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.