Whittaker
surname · Latin script
Meaning: places named from OE hwtt White or hwate Wheat + cecer cultivated land (see Acker), as for example Whitaker in Lancs, and Whitacre in Warwicks, (both ‘white field’) or Whiteacre in Kent and Wheatacre
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: St Kitts & Nevis, 2026
/ˈʍɪɾɪkɚ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Whittaker is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 3.6K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.6K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 7.5K
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 States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 431 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.6K (inferred from the name graph)
17,234 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)places named from OE hwtt White or hwate Wheat + cecer cultivated land (see Acker), as for example Whitaker in Lancs, and Whitacre in Warwicks, (both ‘white field’) or Whiteacre in Kent and Wheatacre in Norfolk (both ‘wheat field’). Vars.: Whit(e)aker; Whitticase. Var.: Whitesides. Whitesmith see Smith
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Whittaker, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Whittaker 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 | — | 17,234 | 1 in 19K | 17K | Whittaker | 431 |
| GB United Kingdom | #434 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 22K | Whittaker | 263 |
| AU Australia | #692 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Whittaker | 191 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 1 | Whittaker | 153 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Whittaker | 8 |
| NZ New Zealand | #621 | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | — | Whittaker | 91 |
| JM Jamaica | #248 | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Whittaker | 14 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 15 | 1 in 3.6K | 15 | — | 3 |
17,234 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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)Whittaker is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Old English; "the white field"
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)- E. T. Whittakerb. 1873GBBritish mathematician (1873-1956)
- Charles Evans Whittakerb. 1901USAmerican judge (1901-1973)
- Tampa Redb. 1904USnot in their usual nameAmerican Chicago blues musician (1904-1981)
- Robert Whittakerb. 1920USAmerican ecologist (1920–1980)
- Ian Whittakerb. 1928GBset decorator (1928–2022)
- Roger Whittakerb. 1936GBKenyan and British musician (1936–2023)
- Craig Whittakerb. 1962GBBritish politician (born 1962)
- Jodie Whittakerb. 1982GBEnglish actress (born 1982)
- Robert Whittakerb. 1990NZAustralian mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter
- Benjamin Whittakerb. 1997GBboxer
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)37 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 22K | #326 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,100 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 17K | #2,080 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 16K | #2,023 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 15 | #167 |
| 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
- 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 Whittaker mean, and where does it come from?
- places named from OE hwtt White or hwate Wheat + cecer cultivated land (see Acker), as for example Whitaker in Lancs, and Whitacre in Warwicks, (both ‘white field’) or Whiteacre in Kent and Wheatacre… Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Whittaker?
- In English /ˈʍɪɾɪkɚ/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Whittaker have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Whittaker, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled whittaker.
- Where is Whittaker most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Whittaker is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 3.6 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Whittaker?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,234 people named Whittaker in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
- How common is Whittaker compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Whittaker is the 248th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Whittaker?
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/whittakerThe 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, “Whittaker” — the 248th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.