Stokes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Stoke (Somerset, Derby, Warwickshire, Northants) or another Stoke; first attested Ricerus de Stochas 1084 GeldR (Somerset)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/stowks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Stokes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GHGhana≈1 in 3K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.5K
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.7K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 521 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈280,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Stoke (Somerset, Derby, Warwickshire, Northants) or another Stoke; first attested Ricerus de Stochas 1084 GeldR (Somerset)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Stokes 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Stokes | 12 |
| US United States | #468 | 61,639 | 1 in 5.4K | 62K | Stokes | 521 |
| GB United Kingdom | #286 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | 26K | Stokes | 273 |
| GH Ghana | #222 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Stokes | 24 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Stokes | 18 |
| AU Australia | #369 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Stokes | 210 |
| IE Ireland | #313 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Stokes | 89 |
| NZ New Zealand | #314 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Stokes | 110 |
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). 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)
Stokes 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, third-person singular simple present indicative of stoke
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, a different form of Stoke.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In French, Le mathématicien et physicien irlandais sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), célèbre pour ses travaux sur l’hydrodynamique, la fluorescence et les rayons X, a donné son nom, en 1928, à une ancienne unité CGS de mesure de la viscosité cinématique valant 10 4 mètres carrés par seconde.
as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
In Irish, In Ireland since the fourteenth century. There were many distinguished persons of the name in the nineteenth century, especially in the field of Irish literature and science. IF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Romanian, STOKES s. m. (Fiz.) Unitate de măsură a viscozității cinematice în sistemul CGS. [Pr.: stocs].
as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology
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)
- John Lort Stokesb. 1811GBWelsh officer of the British Royal Navy, sailed with Charles Darwin (1811-1885)
- George Stokesb. 1819IEIrish mathematician and physicist (1819–1903)
- Marion Stokesb. 1929USAmerican librarian and archivist (1929–2012)
- Maurice Stokesb. 1933USAmerican basketball player (1933–1970)
- Anthony Stokesb. 1988IEIrish association football player
- Ben Stokesb. 1991NZcricketer (born 1991)
- Demi Stokesb. 1991GBEnglish footballer (born 1991)
- Chase Stokesb. 1992USAmerican actor
- Jarnell Stokesb. 1994USAmerican basketball player (born 1994)
- Ruby Stokesb. 2000GBEnglish actress (born 2000)
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 33 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 62K | #542 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 59K | #559 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 59K | #510 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 26K | #265 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Stokes mean, and where does it come from?
- from Stoke (Somerset, Derby, Warwickshire, Northants) or another Stoke; first attested Ricerus de Stochas 1084 GeldR (Somerset) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Stokes?
- A machine transcription gives /stowks/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Stokes have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 279 thousand people named Stokes in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled stokes.
- How common is the name Stokes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 61,639 people named Stokes in 2010, about 1 in 5.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Stokes compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Stokes is the 222nd most common surname of 36,883 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Stokes?
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/stokesThe 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, “Stokes” — the 222nd most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.