Spruce
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Spruce is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: the ME name for which was Spruce or Sprewse-, cf.
- ESSpain
- CACanada
- 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)
the ME name for which was Spruce or Sprewse-, cf. Preuss. The adj. spruce neat, dapper, which probably derives from an attrib. use of the name of the country, is not recorded until the late i6th cent., too late for it to be a likely source of the surname. The tree (earlier Spruce fir) has likewise only come to be known by this name in the last couple of cents.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 2 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)
Spruce 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, Any of various large coniferous evergreen trees or shrubs from the genus Picea, found in northern temperate and boreal regions; originally and more fully spruce fir.
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)
- Richard Spruceb. 1817GBBritish botanist and explorer (1817–1893)
- Everett Franklin Spruceb. 1908USAmerican painter (1908–2002)
- George Spruceb. 1923GBEnglish footballer (1923-1998)
- Phil Spruceb. 1929GBBritish association football player (1929-2010)
- Tabitha Kingb. 1949USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (born 1949)
- Andy Spruceb. 1954CACanadian ice hockey player
- Stuart Spruceb. 1971GBEnglish rugby league footballer and coach
- Nelson Spruceb. 1992USAmerican football player
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 16 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.7K | #4,265 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 691 | #33,121 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 684 | #35,441 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 680 | #32,026 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 16 | #94,489 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 7 | #84,808 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5 | #208,190 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #226,755 |
| 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 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
- Where does the name Spruce come from?
- the ME name for which was Spruce or Sprewse-, cf. Preuss. The adj. spruce neat, dapper, which probably derives from an attrib. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- What does the name Spruce mean?
- Recorded meaning: the ME name for which was Spruce or Sprewse-, cf.
- In which country does Spruce have the most bearers?
- Spruce is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Spruce?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/spruceThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Spruce”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.