Worthy
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for an upright well-respected citizen; or person from Worthy, various places in England
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wɝði/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Worthy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 38K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 44K
- LRLiberia≈1 in 11K
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
- 354 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈48,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Liberia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for an upright well-respected citizen; or person from Worthy, various places in England
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Worthy 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 | — | ≈48,000 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Worthy | 6 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Worthy | 1 |
| US United States | — | 8,795 | 1 in 38K | 8.8K | Worthy | 354 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 1.1K | Worthy | 125 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈980 est. | ≈1 in 107K | — | Worthy | 3 |
| LR Liberia | #196 | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Worthy | 1 |
| JM Jamaica | #666 | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Worthy | 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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)
Worthy 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, from Worthy, Hampshire/Devon; first attested Godwine at Wordige 1001 ASC (Hampshire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, minor places so called from OE wordig, a deriv. of word enclosure (see Worth), z. nickname for a respected mem¬ ber of the community, from ME worthy valuable (a deriv. of worth value, merit, OE weord).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Having worth, merit, or value.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, worthy, noble, brave
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In wuu, Honorable
as a wordAn English-Chinese Vocabulary of the Shanghai Dialect
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)
- Albert Worthyb. 1905GBfootballer (1905-1978)
- William Worthyb. 1921USAmerican journalist
- Phyllis Worthy Dawkinsb. 1953USAmerican academic administrator
- Trevor Worthyb. 1957NZNew Zealand paleozoologist
- James Worthyb. 1961USAmerican basketball player (born 1961)
- Rick Worthyb. 1967USAmerican actor
- Jerel Worthyb. 1990USAmerican football player, defensive lineman
- Calum Worthyb. 1991CACanadian actor
- Sierra Worthyb. 1992USAmerican actress
- Xavier Worthyb. 2003USAmerican football player (born 2003)
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 12 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.8K | #4,040 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.3K | #3,919 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.3K | #4,142 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.1K | #6,024 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Worthy mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for an upright well-respected citizen; or person from Worthy, various places in England Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Worthy?
- A machine transcription gives /wɝði/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Worthy have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 48 thousand people named Worthy in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled worthy.
- How common is the name Worthy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,795 people named Worthy in 2010, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
- How common is Worthy compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Worthy is the 196th most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Worthy?
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/worthyThe 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, “Worthy” — the 196th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.