Stair
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A single step in a staircase
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Stair is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 132K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 419Kas Staur
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Stair itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 7 (measured from records)
- 1 in 132K (inferred from the name graph)
2,522 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Stavr in US United States and Σταυρ in GR Greece.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A single step in a staircase.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Stair 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,522 | 1 in 132K | 2.5K | Stavr | 4 |
| DK Denmark | 14as Staur | 1 in 419K | 14 | — | — |
| GR Greece | — | — | — | Σταυρ | 7 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | — | 49 | — | 1 |
| PL Poland | — | — | 5 | — | — |
2,522 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling stair. 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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20). 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)
Stair is also recorded in 4 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 OE stæger ‘stair’; first attested William de Stegre 1195 P (K)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In frr, place, spot, stead
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, history
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In och, step of stairs
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
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)
- Patty Stairb. 1869USAmerican composer and organist
- Leslie Dalrymple Stairb. 1876botanist and editor (1876-)
- Lois Stairb. 1923First woman moderator of the General Assembly in the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (UPCUSA)
- Bill Stairb. 1939USauthor (1939-1991)
- Julian Stairb. 1955GBBritish potters (born 1955)
- Randy Stairb. 1992USAmerican mass murderer and YouTuber
- Lady Elizabeth Dalrympleb. 2012GBnot in their usual name(born 2012)
- Catcher Stairactor
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 7 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.5K | #12,328 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.4K | #11,879 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,813 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 49 | #51,457 |
| 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 Stair mean, and where does it come from?
- A single step in a staircase. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Stair have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Stair, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled stavr.
- Where is Stair most common?
- Stair is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 132 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Stair?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,522 people named Stair in 2010, about 1 in 132 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Stair?
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/stairThe 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, “Stair”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.