Unwin

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Unwin is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. Recorded meaning: from the Old English male personal name Hunwine, literally 'bearcub-friend' (later confused with unwine 'enemy').

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • AUAustralia
  • 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.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from the Old English male personal name Hunwine, literally 'bearcub-friend' (later confused with unwine 'enemy')

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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)

Unwin is also recorded in 3 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 Hūnwine ‘young bear-friend’, or OE unwine ‘unfriend, enemy’; first attested Hunuuinus, Onouuinus 1066 DB (C, Do)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, composed of the elements hun bearcub + wine friend.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, A surname from Old English.

    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)

18001850190019502000William Unwin, b. 1838Raymond Unwin, b. 1863Edward Unwin, b. 1864Stanley Unwin, b. 1884J. D. Unwin, b. 1895Stanley Unwin, b. 1911David Severn, b. 1918Rayner Unwin, b. 1925Peter Unwin, b. 1932David Unwin, b. 1959
  • William Unwinb. 1838GBBritish civil and mechanical engineer
  • Raymond Unwinb. 1863GBBritish engineer, architect and town planner (1863–1940)
  • Edward Unwinb. 1864ZArecipient of the Victoria Cross (1864–1950)
  • Stanley Unwinb. 1884GBBritish publisher (1884-1968): George Allen & Unwin; Allen and Unwin
  • J. D. Unwinb. 1895GBBritish anthropologist (1895–1936)
  • Stanley Unwinb. 1911GBBritish comedian (1911–2002)
  • David Severnb. 1918GBnot in their usual nameBritish writer, mainly of fiction for older children and under this pseudonym
  • Rayner Unwinb. 1925GBBritish publisher (1925–2000)
  • Peter Unwinb. 1932GBBritish diplomat (1932–2026)
  • David Unwinb. 1959GBBritish paleontologist

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 20 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Unwin
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)20025.1K#1,573
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010644#35,016
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020643#37,267
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000632#33,993
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—20#85,555
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—20#83,413
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20265—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20085#102,531
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—5#69,728
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—5#210,333
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—2#174,692

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 Unwin mean, and where does it come from?
from the Old English male personal name Hunwine, literally 'bearcub-friend' (later confused with unwine 'enemy') Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Unwin have the most bearers?
Unwin is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.

What do you want to know about Unwin?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/unwin

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Unwin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Unwin parses inside a full name →