Senior
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Senior is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English senior, from Latin senior (“older”), comparative form of senex (“old”); see senate. Doublet of seigneur, seignior, sire, sir, and señor.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 24K
- USUnited States1 in 86K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 333 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishsenior(measured from records)
- Latinsenior“older”(measured from records)
From Middle English senior, from Latin senior (“older”), comparative form of senex (“old”); see senate. Doublet of seigneur, seignior, sire, sir, and señor.
Sources 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
- Wiktionary
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Senior 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 11K | Senior | 197 |
| US United States | — | 3,864 | 1 in 86K | 4.3K | Senior | 333 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Senior | 23 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Senior | 142 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Senior | 29 |
| JM Jamaica | #708 | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Senior | 18 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Senior | 65 |
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). 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)
- Abraham Seniorb. 1412ESSephardi rabbi, banker and politician, who converted to Catholicism
- Johann Pölzer seniorb. 1872ATAustrian politician (1872-1934)
- Anna Seniorb. 1941AUcostume designer
- Olive Seniorb. 1941JMJamaican writer
- Peter Seniorb. 1959AUAustralian professional golfer (born 1959)
- Timothy Christian Seniorb. 1960USCatholic bishop
- Steve Seniorb. 1963GBEnglish association football player
- Charlie Seniorb. 2001GBAustralian boxer
- Omer Seniorb. 2003ILIsraeli association footabller
- Jennifer SeniorUSwriter; author of "All Joy and No Fun"
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 30 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 11K | #703 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.3K | #7,500 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,518 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.4K | #8,782 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Senior mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English senior, from Latin senior (“older”), comparative form of senex (“old”); see senate. Doublet of seigneur, seignior, sire, sir, and señor. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and A Frequency Dictionary of German and 3 other sources.
- In which country does Senior have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.8 thousand people named Senior in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled senior.
- How common is the name Senior?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,864 people named Senior in 2010, about 1 in 86 thousand residents.
- How common is Senior compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Senior is the 708th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Senior?
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/seniorThe 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, “Senior” — the 708th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.