Close

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Person who lives by or in an enclosure, or from a nickname for a secretive person

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

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

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

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 2Kas Casey(measured from records)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 2.4Kas Casey
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.8Kas Casey

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Close itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈190,000 named Casey, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
586 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Albania, as Kejsi

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CaseyLatin(measured from records)
КейсиCyrillic(measured from records)
케이시Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Casey in US United States, AU Australia, GB United Kingdom and 4 more.

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 who lives by or in an enclosure, or from a nickname for a secretive person.

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)

Close 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 Close is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈190,000 est.≈1 in 7.2K—Casey39
US United States#393165,300as Casey1 in 2K95KCasey586
GB United Kingdom#592≈10,000 est.≈1 in 6.3K33Casey254
AU Australia#355≈10,000 est.≈1 in 2.4K80Casey213
CA Canada#508≈8,300 est.≈1 in 4.5K39Casey233
AL Albania—2,252as Kejsi1 in 1.4K2.2KCasey13
NZ New Zealand#340≈1,300 est.≈1 in 3.8K20Casey115

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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)

Close is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Closé, Çlosé

  • Swahili surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada

    Also written Closé

48 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)

Close 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 clos(e), OFr clos ‘enclosure’, ‘farm-yard’; ‘Dweller by the enclosed place’ or possibly ‘worker in the farm-yard’. First attested Nicholas de Clos 1296 SRSx.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, lived by an enclosure of some sort, such as (in towns) a courtyard set back from the main street or (in country dis¬ tricts) a farmyard, from ME clos(e) (OF clos, from LL clausum, past part, of claudere to close, shut). 2. nickname for a reserved or secretive person, from ME clos(e) secret.

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

  • In English, To remove or block an opening, gap or passage through.

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

  • In English, Glenn, US actress

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Irish, Some families of this name are of Yorkshire origin and some are of Irish—( Ó Clusaigh ); both are found in Antrim and adjacent counties. MIF

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

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)

1850190019502000Ivy Close, b. 1890William Close, b. 1924Del Close, b. 1934Chuck Close, b. 1940Glenn Close, b. 1947Pat Close, b. 1948Eric Close, b. 1967Philippe Close, b. 1971Joshua Close, b. 1981Ben Close, b. 1996

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 25 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Close
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020109.5K#3,739
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020009.3K#3,525
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020209K#3,854
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Close mean, and where does it come from?
Person who lives by or in an enclosure, or from a nickname for a secretive person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Close?
A machine transcription gives /kləʊs/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Close?
In the etymology graph, Clause is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Close have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 193 thousand people named Casey in China, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Close most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Close itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Albania's: the national register counts about 1 in 1.4 thousand people named Kejsi.
How common is the name Close?
In the United States, the national register counted 165,300 people named Casey in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
How common is Close compared with other names?
In New Zealand, Close is the 340th most common given name of 26,737 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Close?

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

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, “Close” — the 340th most common given name in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Close parses inside a full name →