Bull
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for a man who resembles a bull in size, aggression, etc
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bʊl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bull is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 6.5K
- CACanada≈1 in 18K
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
- 414 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈62,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for a man who resembles a bull in size, aggression, etc.
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)
Bull 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 | — | ≈62,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Bull | 13 |
| US United States | — | 11,646 | 1 in 29K | 12K | Bull | 414 |
| GB United Kingdom | #518 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | listed | Bull | 252 |
| AU Australia | #636 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 6.5K | — | Bull | 175 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Bull | 102 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Bull | 165 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,526 | 1 in 3.6K | 1.5K | Bull | 51 |
| NZ New Zealand | #724 | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | — | Bull | 97 |
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 hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Bull 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 OE bula ‘bull’; first attested Wulfwin Bule 1170 P (Ha)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, An adult male of domesticated cattle or oxen.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, I. John, personification of England
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Olaf, Norwegian poet; Ole,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Norwegian violinist
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)
- John Bullb. 1562GBEnglish composer, musician and organ builder
- George Bullb. 1634GBEnglish Bishop of St David's
- Ole Bullb. 1810NONorwegian violinist (1810–1880)
- Olaf Bullb. 1883NONorwegian poet (1883–1933)
- Peter Bullb. 1912GBBritish actor (1912-1984)
- Richard Bullb. 1924USAmerican film, stage and television actor (1924–2014)
- Gerald Bullb. 1928CACanadian artillery engineer, entrepreneur (1928–1990)
- Hedley Bullb. 1932GBAustralian academic (1932-1985)
- Emma Bullb. 1954USAmerican writer
- Steve Bullb. 1965GBEnglish footballer and manager (born 1965)
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 40 sources across 23 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 surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Bull mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for a man who resembles a bull in size, aggression, etc. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bull?
- A machine transcription gives /bʊl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bull have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 62 thousand people named Bull in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bull.
- Where is Bull most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bull is densest in Norway — about 1 in 3.6 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bull?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,646 people named Bull in 2010, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
- How common is Bull compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Bull is the 518th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bull?
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/bullThe 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, “Bull” — the 518th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.