Shearer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Sheep-shearer’; also ‘person who trims the surface of newly woven cloth’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Shearer is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- CACanada
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘Sheep-shearer’; also ‘person who trims the surface of newly woven cloth’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Shearer is also recorded in 2 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 OE sceran ‘to cut’; one who removes the nap of cloth by shearing; first attested Robert le Sherer 1231 FFC
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A person employed to remove the wool from animals, such as sheep. using shears.
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)
- Douglas Shearerb. 1899USCanadian sound designer and recording director (1899-1971)
- Athole Shearerb. 1900CACanadian actress
- Norma Shearerb. 1902CACanadian-American actress (1902-1983)
- Sybil Louise Shearerb. 1912USAmerican choreographer, modern dancer and writer (1912-2005)
- Aaron Shearerb. 1919USAmerican guitarist (1919–2008)
- Hugh Shearerb. 1923JMPrime Minister of Jamaica (1923-2004)
- Moira Shearerb. 1926GBBritish ballerina and actress (1926–2006)
- Harry Shearerb. 1943USAmerican actor (born 1943)
- Alan Shearerb. 1970GBEnglish footballer
- Al Shearerb. 1977USAmerican 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 21 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 18K | #2,033 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 18K | #1,878 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 17K | #2,070 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3K | #2,565 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 32 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 26 | #20,864 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 25 | #72,718 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 25 | #71,513 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 16 | #46,619 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 15 | #45,119 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 8 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 8 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Shearer mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Sheep-shearer’; also ‘person who trims the surface of newly woven cloth’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Shearer have the most bearers?
- Shearer is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Shearer?
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/shearerThe 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, “Shearer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.