Seaman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1 from the Old English male personal name Sæmann, literally 'sea-man'; 2 sailor
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/siːmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Seaman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 24K
- USUnited States1 in 25K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Seaman itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 392 (measured from records)
- 1 in 453 (inferred from the name graph)
≈60,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Seeman in CN China, BZ Belize.
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)
1 from the Old English male personal name Sæmann, literally 'sea-man'; 2 sailor
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Seaman 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈60,000 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Seeman | 7 |
| US United States | — | 13,237 | 1 in 25K | 13K | Seaman | 392 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 4.7K | Seaman | 179 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 60K | — | Seaman | 11 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Seaman | 128 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Seaman | 30 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Seaman | 23 |
| DM Dominica | — | 164 | 1 in 453 | 164 | — | 8 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈45 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | — | Seaman | 3 |
| BZ Belize | #671 | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Seeman | 1 |
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 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 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)
Seaman is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, surname form; related to OE/ON name elements, see context
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, sonal name composed of the elements sa sea + mann man. 2. occupational name for a sailor. Vars.: Se(e)man, Seyman, Sayman, Seamenn. Patrs.: Se(m)mens Seamons. (Devon and Cornwall), Semmence;
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Synonym of sailor, particularly on a maritime vessel.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, equative degree of aman: as safe as
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)
- Nellie Blyb. 1864USnot in their usual nameAmerican journalist
- Richard Seamanb. 1913GBracecar driver (1913-1939)
- Keith Seamanb. 1920AUGovernor of South Australia (1977-82)
- Barbara Seamanb. 1935USAmerican journalist (1935–2008)
- Christopher Seamanb. 1942GBBritish conductor
- Peter S. Seamanb. 1951USAmerican screenwriter and producer (born 1951)
- David Seamanb. 1963GBEnglish footballer and manager (born 1963)
- Dave Seamanb. 1968GBBritish DJ and record producer
- Camille Seamanb. 1969USphotographer; photographs big ice and big clouds
- Ryan Seamanb. 1983USAmerican drummer
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 26 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,492 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,719 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,926 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4.7K | #1,694 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 164 | #90 |
| 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 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Seaman mean, and where does it come from?
- 1 from the Old English male personal name Sæmann, literally 'sea-man'; 2 sailor Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Seaman?
- A machine transcription gives /siːmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Seaman have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 60 thousand people named Seaman in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled seeman.
- Where is Seaman most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Seaman is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 453 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Seaman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,237 people named Seaman in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Seaman compared with other names?
- In Belize, Seaman is the 671st most common surname of 11,408 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Seaman?
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/seamanThe 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, “Seaman” — the 671st most common surname in Belize. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.