Upshaw
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably person who lives by a higher copse (from Old English upp 'upper' + sceaga 'copse')
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈəpˌʃɔ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Upshaw is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 45K(measured from records)
- BFBurkina Faso≈1 in 13K
- GAGabon≈1 in 18K
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
- 338 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
≈20,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Burkina Faso, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
probably person who lives by a higher copse (from Old English upp 'upper' + sceaga 'copse')
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Upshaw 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 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 69K | — | Upshaw | 2 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Upshaw | 1 |
| US United States | 7,401 | 1 in 45K | 7.4K | Upshaw | 338 |
| BF Burkina Faso | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Upshaw | 1 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Upshaw | 1 |
| ML Mali | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Upshaw | 1 |
| IE Ireland | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Upshaw | 1 |
| GA Gabon | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Upshaw | 2 |
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. 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)
Upshaw 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 surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Gene, US football executive
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- William D. Upshawb. 1866USAmerican politician (1866-1952)
- Gene Upshawb. 1945USAmerican football player, labor leader, NFLPA president (1945-2008)
- Willie Upshawb. 1957USAmerican baseball player and coach
- Jessica Upshawb. 1959USAmerican lawyer and politician
- Dawn Upshawb. 1960USAmerican soprano
- Kelvin Upshawb. 1963USAmerican basketball player-coach
- Courtney Upshawb. 1989USAmerican football linebacker
- Zeke Upshawb. 1991USAmerican basketball player (1991-2018)
- Robert Upshawb. 1994USAmerican basketball player (born 1994)
- Reggie Upshawb. 1995USAmerican basketball player (born 1995)
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 7 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.4K | #4,778 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.1K | #4,813 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.9K | #4,675 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Upshaw mean, and where does it come from?
- probably person who lives by a higher copse (from Old English upp 'upper' + sceaga 'copse') Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Upshaw?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈəpˌʃɔ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Upshaw have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 20 thousand people named Upshaw in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled upshaw.
- How common is the name Upshaw?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,401 people named Upshaw in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Upshaw?
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/upshawThe 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, “Upshaw”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.