Snowball
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE snāw + ME ball ‘a white streak/bald place’, a nickname for a white patch or bald spot; first attested Robert Snawbal 1301 SRY
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/snoʊbɔl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Snowball is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
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)
from OE snāw + ME ball ‘a white streak/bald place’, a nickname for a white patch or bald spot; first attested Robert Snawbal 1301 SRY
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages 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)
Snowball 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 ME snawball snowball, given either for some anecdo¬ tal reason now irrecoverable, or (as Reaney suggests) with reference to a white streak or bald spot in dark hair.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A ball of snow, usually one made in the hand and thrown for amusement in a snowball fight; also a larger ball of snow made by rolling a snowball around in snow that sticks to it and increases its diameter.
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)
- Joshua Snowballb. 1821GBVictorian colonial politician (1821-1893)
- Edward Snowballb. 1830(1830-1911) chief draughtsman at Neilson and Co and later at Neilson, Reid and Co 1911 Died 1911 Obituary
- Jabez Bunting Snowballb. 1837CACanadian politician (1837–1907)
- Ralph Snowballb. 1849AUAustralian photographer
- Oswald Snowballb. 1859GBAustralian politician (1859–1928)
- William Bunting Snowballb. 1865CACanadian politician (1865-1925)
- Bertie Snowballb. 1887GBEnglish professional golfer
- Betty Snowballb. 1908GBBritish international player of cricket, squash and lacrosse (1908-1988)
- Ray Snowballb. 1932GBEnglish footballer (born 1932)
- D. J. SnowballGBresearcher
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 15 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.6K | #4,610 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 580 | #38,214 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 575 | #40,928 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 525 | #39,444 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 22 | #3,449 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #103,913 |
| MX Mexico | RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset) | — | 5 | #7,588 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #388,583 |
| CK Cook Islands | Cook Islands Electoral Rolls (2022 General Election + 2024 Pa Enua) | 2022 | 1 | #58 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
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 Snowball mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE snāw + ME ball ‘a white streak/bald place’, a nickname for a white patch or bald spot; first attested Robert Snawbal 1301 SRY Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Snowball?
- A machine transcription gives /snoʊbɔl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Snowball have the most bearers?
- Snowball is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Snowball?
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/snowballThe 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, “Snowball”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.