Smalls

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Underwear

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/smɔlz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Smalls is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In St. Helena it is the 3rd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • GHGhana≈1 in 2.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 22K
  • USUnited States1 in 27K

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)

≈19,000 people, est.

Sources
355 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 875 (inferred from the name graph)

St. Helena, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Underwear.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Smalls 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.

Where Smalls is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈19,000 est.≈1 in 74K—Smalls3
GH Ghana#154≈14,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K—Smalls9
US United States—12,4351 in 27K12KSmalls355
EG Egypt—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 69K—Smalls2
MY Malaysia—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 22K—Smalls5
JM Jamaica#229≈410 est.≈1 in 6.9K—Smalls4
SH St. Helena#3≈9 est.≈1 in 875—Smalls1

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. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Smalls is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Gabon, Monaco

    Also written Smälls

  • Russian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Смоллс

40 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Smalls is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, son of Smail

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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)

18001850190019502000Robert Smalls, b. 1839Bertie Smalls, b. 1935Henry Smalls, b. 1962Fred Smalls, b. 1963Tiger Smalls, b. 1969Susan Smith, b. 1971Joan Smalls, b. 1988Chris Smalls, b. 1988Kamiah Smalls, b. 1998

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)

FormalDear Smalls,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 12 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Smalls
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201012K#2,888
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202012K#2,952
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200011K#3,049
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Smalls mean, and where does it come from?
Underwear. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Smalls have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Smalls in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled smalls.
How do you pronounce Smalls?
A machine transcription gives /smɔlz/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Smalls?
In the United States, the national register counted 12,435 people named Smalls in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
How common is Smalls compared with other names?
In St. Helena, Smalls is the 3rd most common surname of 3,440 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Smalls?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/smalls

The 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, “Smalls” — the 3rd most common surname in St. Helena. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Smalls parses inside a full name →