Bradford
loc · Latin script
Meaning: person from Bradford, especially Yorkshire, meaning ‘broad ford’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bradford is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- CACanada
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 494 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Bradford, especially Yorkshire, meaning ‘broad ford’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Bradford, 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)
Bradford counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | — | listed | Bradford | 222 |
| US United States | — | 54K | Bradford | 494 |
| CA Canada | — | 1 | Bradford | 166 |
| AU Australia | — | 5 | Bradford | 179 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 8 | Bradford | 25 |
| GY Guyana | — | 215 | — | 6 |
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: the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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)
Bradford 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 one of the numerous Bradfords; first attested Alexander, Brun de Bradeford 1206 (Curia Regis, Devon)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, places, large and small, so called; in particular the city in W Yorks, which was originally a wool town. There are others in Derbys., Devon, Dorset, Greater Manchester, Norfolk, Somerset, and elsew'here. They all take their names from OE brad broad + ford P'ord.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, Alexander, Brun de Bradeford’ 1206 Cur (D), 1219 AssY; Thomas de Bradforth 1358 FrY. From one of the numerous Bradfords.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A number of places in England:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, city, PA; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Edward Titchenerb. 1867GBnot in their usual nameAmerican psychologist (1867–1927)
- Walter Bradford Cannonb. 1871USAmerican physiologist (1871-1945)
- Bradford Dillmanb. 1930USAmerican actor (1930–2018)
- Richard Bradfordb. 1937USAmerican actor (1934–2016)
- Brad Dourifb. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1950)
- Brad Lewisb. 1958USnot in their usual nameAmerican film producer
- Brad Mehldaub. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican jazz pianist, composer, and arranger
- Brad Delsonb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican guitarist and rock musician
- Jesse Bradfordb. 1979USAmerican actor
- Bradford Coxb. 1982USAmerican musician
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 52 sources across 29 countries.
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 given-name tokens
- 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 Bradford mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Bradford, especially Yorkshire, meaning ‘broad ford’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bradford have the most bearers?
- Bradford is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled bradford.
What do you want to know about Bradford?
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/bradfordThe 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, “Bradford”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.