WaNt
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Middle English want ‘mole’; first attested Edwin Wante 1207 Cur (Nf)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/wɐnt/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
WaNt is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 70K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 93K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 150K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 169 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 70K (inferred from the name graph)
≈470 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Middle English want ‘mole’; first attested Edwin Wante 1207 Cur (Nf).
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)WaNt 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 147K | 904 | WaNt | 98 |
| IN India | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 3.1M | 1.6K | WaNt | 24 |
| US United States | 458 | 1 in 726K | 510 | WaNt | 169 |
| AU Australia | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 70K | — | WaNt | 91 |
| CA Canada | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 325K | — | WaNt | 42 |
| BE Belgium | 126 | 1 in 93K | 126 | WaNt | 14 |
| NO Norway | 12 | 1 in 456K | 12 | — | 3 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the in-instate-surnames-bystate register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)WaNt is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., to wish, like, 16 = need; v. and n., mani, feli. Gbo wu loi ngi pé wu ma’? What do you want
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Dutch, because
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Dutch
In Dutch, for, because, as
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In dum, because, for
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)- Jack Wantb. 1846AUpolitician and barrister in New South Wales, Australia
- Tony Wantb. 1948GBEnglish footballer (born 1948)
- Ruben Wantb. 1992NONorwegian association football player
- Shaun Wantb. 1997GBassociation football 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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 1.6K | #522 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 904 | #7,169 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 510 | #45,217 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 458 | #46,487 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 417 | #47,735 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 126 | #12,883 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 12 | #53,744 |
| 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 WaNt mean, and where does it come from?
- Middle English want ‘mole’; first attested Edwin Wante 1207 Cur (Nf). Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name WaNt?
- In the etymology graph, Wante is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce WaNt?
- In English /wɐnt/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does WaNt have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 472 people named WaNt in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled WaNt.
- How common is the name WaNt?
- In the United States, the national register counted 458 people named WaNt in 2010, about 1 in 726 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about WaNt?
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/wantThe 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, “WaNt”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.