Dubois
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in French: a habitational surname, equivalent to English Woods
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dybwa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dubois is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In France it is the 5th most common surname.
- FRFrance≈1 in 830(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 903
- CACanada≈1 in 4.6K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 368 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 830 (inferred from the name graph)
≈97,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
French surname meaning ‘from the wood’ or ‘person who lives in a wood’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Dubois is read(measured from records)
Dubois is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- French59%
a habitational surname, equivalent to English Woods
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
de du Bois, dérivé de Le Bois; nom de plusieurs localités en France
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
- English33%
French surname meaning ‘from the wood’ or ‘person who lives in a wood’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A placename
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
county, IN
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dubois 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 | — | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Dubois | 7 |
| FR France | #5 | ≈82,000 est. | ≈1 in 830 | 9.8K | Dubois | 368 |
| US United States | — | 23,366 | 1 in 14K | 23K | Dubois | 325 |
| BE Belgium | #6 | 12,975 | 1 in 903 | 13K | Dubois | 141 |
| CA Canada | #720 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Dubois | 183 |
| CH Switzerland | #421 | 2,015 | 1 in 4.2K | 2K | Dubois | 83 |
| DM Dominica | — | 29 | 1 in 2.6K | 29 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Guillaume Duboisb. 1656FRFrench cardinal and politician (1656-1723)
- Théodore Duboisb. 1837FRFrench composer and Organist (1837-1924)
- Eugène Duboisb. 1858NLDutch paleoanthropologist (1858–1940)
- Stanisław Duboisb. 1901PLPolish journalist and political activist
- Denys de La Patellièreb. 1921FRnot in their usual nameFrench film director and scriptwriter (1921–2013)
- Vladimir Poznerb. 1934FRnot in their usual nameFrench-Russian-American journalist (1934- )
- Marie Duboisb. 1937FRFrench actress (1937-2014)
- Pierre Duboisb. 1941FRFrench politician (1941- )
- Alexandre de La Patellièreb. 1971FRnot in their usual nameFrench film director
- Léo Duboisb. 1994FRFrench footballer (born 1994)
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 42 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 23K | #1,539 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,554 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 22K | #1,459 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 13K | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 13K | #13 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 13K | — |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 12K | #13 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 11K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 11K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 11K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 9.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 9.8K | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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 Dubois mean?
- In French, a habitational surname, equivalent to English Woods
- Where does the name Dubois come from?
- French surname meaning ‘from the wood’ or ‘person who lives in a wood’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Dubois?
- A machine transcription gives /dybwa/ (IPA) for French.
- In which country does Dubois have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 97 thousand people named Dubois in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dubois.
- How common is the name Dubois?
- In the United States, the national register counted 23,366 people named Dubois in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Dubois compared with other names?
- In France, Dubois is the 5th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Dubois?
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/duboisThe 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, “Dubois” — the 5th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.