Banks

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) Person who lives by a riverbank or on the side of a hill; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Bruachdin, a nickname based on a large paunch

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/bæŋks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Banks is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 83rd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.6K(inferred from the name graph)
  • JMJamaica≈1 in 2.6K
  • USUnited States1 in 3.1K

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)

105,833 people, 2010

#881 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

Sources
535 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.6K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

(i) Person who lives by a riverbank or on the side of a hill; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Bruachdin, a nickname based on a large paunch.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Banks, 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)

Banks 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.

Where Banks is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#253105,8331 in 3.1K106KBanks535
GB United Kingdom#234≈25,000 est.≈1 in 2.6KlistedBanks293
EG Egypt—≈9,600 est.≈1 in 11K—Banks21
CA Canada#413≈8,100 est.≈1 in 4.7K22Banks205
AU Australia#352≈6,700 est.≈1 in 3.8K—Banks215
NZ New Zealand#313≈1,300 est.≈1 in 3.8K24Banks109
JM Jamaica#83≈1,100 est.≈1 in 2.6K—Banks13

105,833 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; the scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Banks is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Bank-S

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Bank'S

  • Polish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Báńkś, Bâñkš, Bànkś

  • Indonesian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Bãñks, Bãnks, Bānks, Bánks

59 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Banks 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, From Latin/locative 'of the banks'; from Alexander de Riparia, who held land at Tweedmouth in the early 13th century. Orkney/Caithness Banks may be unrelated.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • Alexander de Riparia (Latin ‘of the banks’) owned land at Tweedmouth in the early 13th century. Either he or other riparians founded Banks as a surname. The Banks name in Orkney and Caithness, noted as Bankis in 1648, seems an unrelated local location name.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In Danish, indefinite genitive singular of bank

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Latvian, lieto, lai atdarinātu dobju sitiena vai kritiena troksni

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

1700180019002000Joseph Banks, b. 1743Leslie Banks, b. 1890Lynne Reid Banks, b. 1929Gordon Banks, b. 1937Jonathan Banks, b. 1947Tyra Banks, b. 1973Elizabeth Banks, b. 1974Briana Banks, b. 1979Azealia Banks, b. 1991Mercedes Moné, b. 1992
  • Joseph Banksb. 1743GBEnglish naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences (1743-1820)
  • Leslie Banksb. 1890GBactor (1890-1952)
  • Lynne Reid Banksb. 1929GBBritish writer (1929–2024)
  • Gordon Banksb. 1937GBEnglish association football player (1937–2019)
  • Jonathan Banksb. 1947USAmerican actor
  • Tyra Banksb. 1973USAmerican television personality, producer, and former model
  • Elizabeth Banksb. 1974USAmerican actress and director
  • Briana Banksb. 1979DEGerman-American pornographic actress and model
  • Azealia Banksb. 1991USAmerican rapper, singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman (born 1991)
  • Mercedes Monéb. 1992USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and actress

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)

FormalDear Banks,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 43 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Banks
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010106K#292
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020104K#297
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200099K#278
GB United KingdomScottish Surnames (Ross, 1994)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Banks mean, and where does it come from?
(i) Person who lives by a riverbank or on the side of a hill; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O Bruachdin, a nickname based on a large paunch. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Banks?
A machine transcription gives /bæŋks/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Banks have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 106 thousand people named Banks, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled banks.
How common is the name Banks?
In the United States, the national register counted 105,833 people named Banks in 2010, about 1 in 3.1 thousand residents.
How common is Banks compared with other names?
In the United States, Banks is the 253rd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Banks?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/banks

The 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, “Banks” — the 253rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Banks parses inside a full name →