Shipman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘sailor’ or ‘boatbuilder’; (ii) ‘shepherd’, from Middle English schepman, literally ‘sheepman’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃɪpmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shipman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 21K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 25K
- ISIceland≈1 in 11K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 392 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈87,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Iceland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘sailor’ or ‘boatbuilder’; (ii) ‘shepherd’, from Middle English schepman, literally ‘sheepman’.
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)
Shipman 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 | ≈87,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Shipman | 5 |
| US United States | 15,581 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Shipman | 392 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 2K | Shipman | 149 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Shipman | 10 |
| EG Egypt | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Shipman | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Shipman | 24 |
| IS Iceland | ≈31 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Shipman | 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; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Shipman 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, either from OE scipmann 'seaman, sailor' or OE scēap 'sheep' + mann 'shepherd'; first attested Schipemannus 1130 P (R)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Synonym of sailor.
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)
- Ellen Biddle Shipmanb. 1869USAmerican landscape architect (1869–1950)
- Nell Shipmanb. 1892CAactress, screenwriter, producer, animal trainer (1892–1970)
- Helen Shipmanb. 1899USAmerican actress (1899–1984)
- Nina Shipmanb. 1938USretired American film and television actress, born 1938
- Harold Shipmanb. 1946GBEnglish doctor and serial killer (1947-2004)
- Claire Shipmanb. 1962USAmerican journalist, Acting President of Columbia University
- Megan Shipmanb. 1972USAmerican voice actress
- Mark Shipmanb. 1973GBBritish diver
- Jay Lethalb. 1985USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler
- Madisyn Shipmanb. 2002USAmerican actress
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 19 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,339 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,235 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,431 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2K | #3,635 |
| 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
- 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 Shipman mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘sailor’ or ‘boatbuilder’; (ii) ‘shepherd’, from Middle English schepman, literally ‘sheepman’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Shipman?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃɪpmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Shipman have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 87 thousand people named Shipman in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shipman.
- How common is the name Shipman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,581 people named Shipman in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Shipman?
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/shipmanThe 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, “Shipman”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.