Stanford
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Person from Stanford, from various English places meaning ‘stony ford’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Stanford is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 16K
- CACanada≈1 in 17K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 432 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.6K (inferred from the name graph)
21,295 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person from Stanford, from various English places meaning ‘stony ford’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Stanford 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 | 21,295 | 1 in 16K | 21K | Stanford | 432 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 4.9K | Stanford | 195 |
| CA Canada | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 1 | Stanford | 135 |
| AU Australia | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 3 | Stanford | 142 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Stanford | 47 |
| GY Guyana | 133 | 1 in 5.6K | 133 | — | 3 |
21,295 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM). 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)
Stanford is also recorded in 5 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 Stanford places in Bedfordshire, Kent, Norfolk, or Stanford Dingley, Stanford le Hope, Stanford Bishop, Stanford Regis, Stanford on Avon, Stanford upon Soar, Stanford in Teme; first attested William de Stanford 1190-1 P (St)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name from the very numerous 226 places named with the Old English elements stan ‘stone’ + ford ‘ford’. Use as a given name may have been influenced by the prestigious Californian university named after Senator Leland Stanford, on whose land it was built. It may also in some cases have been adopted as an alternative elaboration of pStan.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Vars.: Stollard, Stallwood; Stal(l)worthy, Stolworthy; Stal(l)ey. places, for example in Beds., Berks., Essex, Herts., Kent, Norfolk, Northants, Notts., and Worcs., so called from OE stan Stone + ford Ford.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, ous places, for example in Beds., Berks., Essex, Herts., Kent, Norfolk, Northants, Notts., and Worcs., so called from OE stan Stone ford Ford.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A habitational surname from Old English.
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)
- Leland Stanfordb. 1824USAmerican politician and railroad tycoon (1824-1893)
- Jane Stanfordb. 1828USphilanthropist, first lady of California, co-founder of Stanford University (1828-1905)
- Sir Charles Villiers Stanfordb. 1852GBIrish composer, music teacher, and conductor (1852–1924)
- Stanford Whiteb. 1853USAmerican architect (1853-1906)
- Leland Stanford, Jr.b. 1868USNamesake of Stanford University
- Stanford Mooreb. 1913USAmerican biochemist (1913-1982)
- Thomas Stanfordb. 1924USAmerican film editor (1924-2017)
- Allen Stanfordb. 1950USChairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison
- Jason Gray-Stanfordb. 1970CACanadian film actor
- Aaron Stanfordb. 1976USAmerican actor (born 1976)
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 53 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 21K | #1,692 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 21K | #1,601 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,726 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4.9K | #1,623 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 133 | #492 |
| 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 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Stanford mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Stanford, from various English places meaning ‘stony ford’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Stanford have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 21 thousand people named Stanford, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled stanford.
- Where is Stanford most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Stanford is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 5.6 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Stanford?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,295 people named Stanford in 2010, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Stanford?
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/stanfordThe 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, “Stanford”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.