Brear

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Brear is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. Recorded meaning: nickname from ‘prickly thorn-bush’ (briar); first attested Walter le Brer 1255 RH (Sa).

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom
  • USUnited States
  • AUAustralia

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.

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

nickname from ‘prickly thorn-bush’ (briar); first attested Walter le Brer 1255 RH (Sa)

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Recorded in:

No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.

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)

Brear 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, who lived by a briar patch, ME brere (OE br<xr, brer). 2. nickname for a prickly, difficult individual, from the same word as in i, applied in a transferred sense. Brendeke see Brand Brennach see Brannick Var.: Brier(s), Bryer(s), Briar(s).

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In Spanish, to dip in tar (see embrear)

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

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, indefinite plural of bre

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

  • In Galician, to tar

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

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)

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 9 sources across 4 countries.

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Brear mean, and where does it come from?
nickname from ‘prickly thorn-bush’ (briar); first attested Walter le Brer 1255 RH (Sa) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
In which country does Brear have the most bearers?
Brear is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.

What do you want to know about Brear?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/brear

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Brear”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Brear parses inside a full name →