Sturgess
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably from the Old Norse personal name Thorgils, literally ‘Thor’s hostage’ (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Sturgess is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ghana than in any other country.
- GHGhana≈1 in 11Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 36K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 44K
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.
- Ghana (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 207 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,200 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ghana, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)probably from the Old Norse personal name Thorgils, literally ‘Thor’s hostage’
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Sturgess is found
(measured from records)Sturgess 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GH Ghana | #854 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Sturgess | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 3.6K | Sturgess | 155 |
| US United States | — | 677 | 1 in 491K | 692 | Sturgess | 207 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Sturgess | 103 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 163K | — | Sturgess | 93 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Sturgess | 32 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)Sturgess 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, name Porgils, composed of the divine name Porr + gils hostage, pledge. However, the inorganic initial S- is not easily explained; it may be the result of OF influence. Stuart see Stewart
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)- Olive Sturgessb. 1933CACanadian former actress
- Paul Sturgessb. 1975GBprofessional footballer (born 1975)
- Jim Sturgessb. 1978GBEnglish actor and singer-songwriter
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)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Sturgess mean, and where does it come from?
- probably from the Old Norse personal name Thorgils, literally ‘Thor’s hostage’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Sturgess?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 thousand people named Sturgess in Ghana, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sturgess. After it come United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Sturgess?
- In the United States, the national register counted 677 people named Sturgess in 2010, about 1 in 491 thousand residents.
- How common is Sturgess compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Sturgess is the 854th most common surname of 36,883 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sturgess?
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/sturgessThe 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, “Sturgess” — the 854th most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.