Waterman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person who lives by a stretch of water’, ‘boatman’, or ‘water-carrier’; (ii) ‘servant of Walter’; (iii) an anglicization of Wasserman
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈwɔtɝmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Waterman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 23K
- USUnited States1 in 27K
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
- 413 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)
12,177 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘person who lives by a stretch of water’, ‘boatman’, or ‘water-carrier’; (ii) ‘servant of Walter’; (iii) an anglicization of Wasserman.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Waterman 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 | — | 12,177 | 1 in 27K | 12K | Waterman | 413 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 16K | 3.7K | Waterman | 186 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 86K | listed | Waterman | 11 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Waterman | 130 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Waterman | 9 |
| LB Lebanon | #943 | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Waterman | 1 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Waterman | 22 |
| GY Guyana | — | 113 | 1 in 6.6K | 113 | — | 4 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Waterman | 2 |
12,177 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Waterman is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Servant of Walter; also 'water-carrier/boatman'; first attested Adam Walterman 1260 AssY
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A seaman, a sailor.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Lewis E. Waterman déposa, le 12 février 1884, un brevet relatif au Waterman Regular, le premier stylographe digne de ce nom. Littré mentionne déjà le mot mais avec un tout autre sens : « Espèce de machine propre à creuser la terre sous l’eau. » Dans ce sens, le mot ne dérive pas d’un nom propre mais de deux mots anglais water , eau, et man , homme.
as a name2500 noms propres devenus communs : dictionnaire étymologique (éponymes, antonomases et hypallages)
In Dutch, water boy, water carrier
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)
- Robert Watermanb. 1826USGovernor of California (1826-1891)
- Charles W. Watermanb. 1861USAmerican politician (1861-1932)
- Alan Tower Watermanb. 1892USAmerican physicist (1892–1967)
- Willard Watermanb. 1914USAmerican actor (1914-1995)
- Michael S. Watermanb. 1942USAmerican scientist and professor at the University of Southern California
- Dennis Watermanb. 1948GBEnglish actor and singer (1948–2022)
- Hannah Watermanb. 1975GBEnglish actress
- Boy Watermanb. 1984NLDutch footballer
- Cecilio Watermanb. 1991PAPanamanian footballer
- Joel Watermanb. 1996CACanadian soccer 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)
Attested in 30 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #2,947 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,797 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #3,043 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3.7K | #2,166 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 113 | #512 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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 Waterman mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person who lives by a stretch of water’, ‘boatman’, or ‘water-carrier’; (ii) ‘servant of Walter’; (iii) an anglicization of Wasserman. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Waterman?
- In the etymology graph, Wassermann is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Waterman?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɔtɝmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Waterman have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Waterman, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled waterman.
- Where is Waterman most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Waterman is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 6.6 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Waterman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,177 people named Waterman in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
- How common is Waterman compared with other names?
- In Lebanon, Waterman is the 943rd most common surname of 45,185 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Waterman?
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/watermanThe 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, “Waterman” — the 943rd most common surname in Lebanon. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.