The
org · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
The is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: either from the medieval personal name Ares, which is probably of Gmc origin, or else from a medieval personal nam eAria or Anus, which is probably of Romance origin. Cogn.: Port.: Aires.
- USUnited States1 in 105K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 360K
- SESweden1 in 64K
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
- 303 (measured from records)
- 1 in 64K (inferred from the name graph)
3,178 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ťhę in DZ Algeria.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
either from the medieval personal name Ares, which is probably of Gmc origin, or else from a medieval personal nam eAria or Anus, which is probably of Romance origin. Cogn.: Port.: Aires. Arino Catalan: topographic name for someone who lived by a sloe tree, Cat. aranyo (of Celt, origin). wrytte maker, craftsman (see Wright). The surname is most common in Lancs. Vars.: Atrick; Hartwright, Hartrick, Hattrick. Cogn.: Du.: Van Ark.
Sources 4
- A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
- A dictionary of surnames
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
The 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 | 3,178 | 1 in 105K | 2K | The | 303 |
| SE Sweden | 160 | 1 in 64K | 160 | — | 23 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 542K | — | Ťhę | 9 |
| BR Brazil | 57 | 1 in 3.7M | 57 | — | 3 |
| FI Finland | 50 | 1 in 111K | 162 | — | 11 |
| NL Netherlands | 48 | 1 in 360K | 453 | The | 42 |
| DK Denmark | 35 | 1 in 168K | 35 | — | 1 |
3,178 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Herly Theb. 1926IDIndonesian badminton player
- Seno Theb. 1963NLbadminton player
- The Ai Lingb. 1972IDIndonesian badminton player
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 45 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 459 | #49,502 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 453 | #4,323 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 445 | #18,904 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 351 | #57,914 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 258 | #70,679 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 6 | #50,190 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 The mean, and where does it come from?
- either from the medieval personal name Ares, which is probably of Gmc origin, or else from a medieval personal nam eAria or Anus, which is probably of Romance origin. Cogn.: Port.: Aires. Recorded by A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India and A dictionary of surnames and 2 other sources.
- In which country does The have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.2 thousand people named The, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled the.
- Where is The most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, The is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 64 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name The?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,178 people named The in 2020, about 1 in 105 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about The?
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/theThe 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, “The”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.