Spare
org · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Spare is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: From Middle English spare, spar, from Old English spær (“sparing, scant”), from Proto-Germanic *sparaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sph₁rós, from the root *speh₁-.
- UGUganda
- USUnited States
- TZTanzania
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.
- United States (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 169 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Middle Englishspare(measured from records)
- Old Englishspær“sparing“sparing, scant”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*sparaz(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*sph₁rós(measured from records)
From Middle English spare, spar, from Old English spær (“sparing, scant”), from Proto-Germanic *sparaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sph₁rós, from the root *speh₁-. Compare Dutch spaar(zaam), German spar(sam) and spär(lich), Swedish spar(sam), Icelandic sparr (“sparing”); also Latin (pro)sperus (“lucky”), Old Church Slavonic споръ (sporŭ, “plentiful”), Albanian shperr (“earn money”), Persian سپار (sepâr, “entrust; deposit”), Ancient Greek σπαρνός (sparnós, “rare”), Sanskrit स्फिर (sphirá, “thick”).
Sources 1
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Spare counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 586 | Spare | 169 |
| UG Uganda | — | — | Spare | 2 |
| GH Ghana | — | — | Spare | 3 |
| AU Australia | — | — | Spare | 31 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | — | Spare | 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 2000. 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)
- Austin Osman Spareb. 1886GBEnglish artist (1886-1956)
- Richard Spareb. 1951GBBritish artist & master printmaker (born 1951)
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 8 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 586 | #36,129 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 549 | #42,533 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 500 | #43,206 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Spare mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English spare, spar, from Old English spær (“sparing, scant”), from Proto-Germanic *sparaz, from Proto-Indo-European *sph₁rós, from the root *speh₁-. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Spare have the most bearers?
- Spare is most frequently recorded in the United States, where it is most often spelled spare.
What do you want to know about Spare?
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/spareThe 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, “Spare”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.