Tinkler
surname · Latin script
Meaning: itinerant mender of pots and pans; variant of Tinker
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈtɪŋkəɫɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Tinkler is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 54K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 89K
- USUnited States1 in 355K
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
- 218 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 54K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
itinerant mender of pots and pans; variant of Tinker.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tinkler 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 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 197K | — | Tinkler | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 54K | 2.6K | Tinkler | 134 |
| US United States | 937 | 1 in 355K | 937 | Tinkler | 218 |
| AU Australia | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Tinkler | 84 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 226K | — | Tinkler | 26 |
| GT Guatemala | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 110K | — | Tinkler | 2 |
| AT Austria | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 80K | — | Tinkler | 14 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈50 est. | ≈1 in 99K | — | Tinkler | 33 |
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)
Tinkler is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A small bell.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from tinker, ‘a worker in metal, tinker’; first attested Roger le Tinkelere 1268 MESO (Y)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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)
- Ray Tinklerb. 1935GBEnglish football referee
- Scott Tinklerb. 1965AUAustralian trumpeter
- Robert Tinklerb. 1973CACanadian actor
- Mark Tinklerb. 1974GBEnglish association football player (born 1974)
- Jamie Tinklerb. 1981GBBritish singer
- Cole Tinklerb. 1986NZNew Zealand footballer
- Amy Tinklerb. 1999GBBritish artistic gymnast
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 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.6K | #2,957 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 937 | #26,126 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 934 | #24,969 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 888 | #28,554 |
| 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 Tinkler mean, and where does it come from?
- itinerant mender of pots and pans; variant of Tinker. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Tinkler?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈtɪŋkəɫɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Tinkler have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.1 thousand people named Tinkler in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tinkler.
- How common is the name Tinkler?
- In the United States, the national register counted 937 people named Tinkler in 2010, about 1 in 355 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Tinkler?
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/tinklerThe 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, “Tinkler”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.