Suckling
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for someone of childlike appearance or childish character
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsəkɫɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Suckling is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- 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)
from a medieval nickname for someone of childlike appearance or childish character.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
Suckling 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 sūcan ‘to suck’, a double diminutive; nickname; first attested John Sokeling 1195 P (Berks)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, ish in appearance or behaviour, from ME suckling infant at the breast (from OE siican to suck + the Gmc suffix -ling (cf. Chamberlain), probably under the influence of MDu. sugeling). The surname is attested from the 13th cent., al¬ though the vocab. word does not appear until the 15th cent. Suddaby see Sotheby Sultan see Sowden
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, in appearance or behaviour, from ME suckling infant at the breast (from OE sucan to suck + the Gmc suffix -ling (cf. Chamberlain), probably under the influence of MDu. sugeling). The surname is attested from the 13th cent., although the vocab. word does not appear until the 15th cent.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, An infant that is still being breastfed (being suckled) by its mother.
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)
- Catherine Sucklingb. 1725GBHoratio Nelson's mother (1725-1767)
- Maurice Sucklingb. 1726GBBritish Naval officer (1726-1778)
- Alfred Inigo Sucklingb. 1796British antiquarian (1796-1856)
- Ernest Sucklingb. 1890GBEnglish cricketer (1890-1962)
- Norman Sucklingb. 1938NZNew Zealand rower (1938-1964)
- Nigel Sucklingb. 1950GBUK author (1950- ) of illustrated books on mythology and folklore, and biographer of many sf/fantasy artists
- James Sucklingb. 1958USAmerican wine critic
- Perry Sucklingb. 1965GBEnglish footballer (born 1965)
- Isabel Sucklingb. 1998GBBritish singer
- Christopher SucklingGBdoctoral candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science
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 12 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.7K | #4,332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 137 | #117,538 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 123 | #136,449 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 115 | #145,757 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| PG Papua New Guinea | PNG Election Results Database — candidate names (1972–2022) | — | 2 | #34 |
| 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 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Suckling mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for someone of childlike appearance or childish character. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Suckling?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsəkɫɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Suckling?
- In the etymology graph, Suck, Sucker and Suckle are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Suckling have the most bearers?
- Suckling is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
What do you want to know about Suckling?
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/sucklingThe 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, “Suckling”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.