Westby
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Westby (Lancashire, Lincolnshire, WRY); first attested William de Westebi 1219 AssL; see also Westoby
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Westby is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 133K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 165K
- NONorway1 in 2.7K
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
- 276 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
2,021 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Westby (Lancashire, Lincolnshire, WRY); first attested William de Westebi 1219 AssL; see also Westoby
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Westby 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 | — | 2,021 | 1 in 165K | 2K | Westby | 276 |
| NO Norway | — | 2,004 | 1 in 2.7K | 2K | Westby | 43 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 133K | 644 | Westby | 90 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 110K | — | Westby | 49 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 276K | — | Westby | 2 |
| SE Sweden | — | 95 | 1 in 107K | 95 | Westby | 15 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #818 | — | — | — | Westby | 2 |
2,021 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)
Westby 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, side the original High Ger. byform wdfen). places, for example in Lancs., Lines., and W Yorks., so Vars.: Weppner, Weppler. called from ON vestr West + byr settlement. Were see Ware
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Old English; from the sheep farm.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Karl Westbyb. 1915NONorwegian musician and conductor
- Øyvind Westbyb. 1947NONorwegian composer
- Line Westbyb. 1963NObadminton player
- Lars-Erik Westbyb. 1966NONorwegian singer and composer
- Marianne Westbyb. 1974NONorwegian actress
- Tarjei Westbyb. 1991NONorwegian actor
- Madison Westbyb. 1996USAmerican tennis player
- Maggie WestbyGBresearcher
- Robert WestbyGBperson who owned merchant ships
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Westby mean, and where does it come from?
- from Westby (Lancashire, Lincolnshire, WRY); first attested William de Westebi 1219 AssL; see also Westoby Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Westby have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.0 thousand people named Westby, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled westby.
- Where is Westby most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Westby is densest in Norway — about 1 in 2.7 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Westby?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,021 people named Westby in 2010, about 1 in 165 thousand residents.
- How common is Westby compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Westby is the 818th most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Westby?
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/westbyThe 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, “Westby” — the 818th most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.