Bush

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Person living in a bushy area, or anglicized German Busch, sometimes adopted with reference to the burning bush

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

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

Bush is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 3.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 4K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4K

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)

≈350,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
534 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Iceland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BushLatin(measured from records)
부시Hangul(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Person living in a bushy area, or anglicized German Busch, sometimes adopted with reference to the burning bush.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bush 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 Bush is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈350,000 est.≈1 in 4K—Bush12
US United States#35684,0181 in 4K84KBush534
GB United Kingdom#461≈15,000 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Bush232
EG Egypt—≈9,600 est.≈1 in 11K—Bush21
IT Italy#758≈7,100 est.≈1 in 8.8KlistedBush29
IE Ireland#405≈1,400 est.≈1 in 3.8K—Bush20
NZ New Zealand#374≈1,200 est.≈1 in 4K—Bush80
IS Iceland#686≈94 est.≈1 in 3.7KlistedBush3

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. 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)

Bush is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Bûśh, Bušh, Büšh

  • Hindi given name54 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Urdu

    Also written Bishu, Visu, বিশু, Vish, বিষু

  • Russian surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish

    Also written Буш, Busch, Бушь, Büsch, Бюш

60 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)

Bush 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 ME busk, busche ‘bush’; first attested Richard de la Busce 1181 P (Yorkshire)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, A woody plant distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, being usually less than six metres tall; a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category.

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

  • In English, George, 41st US president

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, ndogbo, ngole. Bush-fowl, kokaye, ku- bengo, téwé, nyangbé, tua-wuld. Bush-cow, n., heke. Bush-deer, malu

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In Albanian, boxwood (Buxus sempervirens)

    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)

1850190019502000Vannevar Bush, b. 1890George H. W. Bush, b. 1924Barbara Bush, b. 1925Laura Bush, b. 1946George W. Bush, b. 1946Jeb Bush, b. 1953Kate Bush, b. 1958Jared Bush, b. 1974Barbara Bush, b. 1981Sophia Bush, b. 1982
  • Vannevar Bushb. 1890USAmerican electrical engineer and science administrator (1890–1974)
  • George H. W. Bushb. 1924USpresident of the United States from 1989 to 1993 (1924-2018)
  • Barbara Bushb. 1925USFirst Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993 (1925–2018)
  • Laura Bushb. 1946USFirst Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009
  • George W. Bushb. 1946USPresident of the United States from 2001 to 2009
  • Jeb Bushb. 1953USGovernor of Florida from 1999 to 2007
  • Kate Bushb. 1958GBEnglish singer, pianist and songwriter (born 1958)
  • Jared Bushb. 1974USAmerican screenwriter
  • Barbara Bushb. 1981USAmerican health care activist; daughter of George W. Bush (born 1981)
  • Sophia Bushb. 1982USAmerican 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 Bush,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 38 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Bush
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201084K#372
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200082K#346
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202080K#393
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 7

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 Bush mean, and where does it come from?
Person living in a bushy area, or anglicized German Busch, sometimes adopted with reference to the burning bush. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Bush?
A machine transcription gives /bʊʃ/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Bush?
In the etymology graph, Busch is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Bush have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 352 thousand people named Bush in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bush.
How common is the name Bush?
In the United States, the national register counted 84,018 people named Bush in 2010, about 1 in 4.0 thousand residents.
How common is Bush compared with other names?
In the United States, Bush is the 356th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bush?

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

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, “Bush” — the 356th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bush parses inside a full name →