Fontaine

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: fountain

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

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

Fontaine is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 34th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • FRFrance≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • BEBelgium1 in 2.1K
  • CACanada≈1 in 5.6K

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.

France (inferred from the name graph)

≈45,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
345 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 171 (inferred from the name graph)

Dominica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

FontaineLatin(measured from records)
ฟงเตนThai(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)

fountain

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

How Fontaine is read(measured from records)

Fontaine 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.

  • French57%

    fountain

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

    De Fontaine, nom de plusieurs localités à travers la France.

    as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

  • English36%

    Jean de la, French writer

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    Joan, US actress

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Fontaine 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 Fontaine is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
FR France#34≈45,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K7.2KFontaine345
US United States—11,9011 in 28K12KFontaine281
CA Canada#995≈6,700 est.≈1 in 5.6K—Fontaine186
BE Belgium#565,5511 in 2.1K5.6KFontaine117
GB United Kingdom—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 19K—Fontaine87
DM Dominica—4341 in 171434——
RE Réunion#35≈210 est.≈1 in 3.7K—Fontaine48

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); 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • English surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Fontaìne

  • Russian surname22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, Canada, Belgium

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Фонтейн, Фонтен, Fonteyn, Fonteyne, Fonten

65 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)

Fontaine is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Latvian, Fontāna

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

1700180019002000Fontaine, b. 1762Lillian Fontaine, b. 1886Joan Fontaine, b. 1917Just Fontaine, b. 1933Brigitte Fontaine, b. 1939Jean-Marc Fontaine, b. 1944Anne Fontaine, b. 1959Agathe de La Fontaine, b. 1972Thomas Fontaine, b. 1991Stéphane Fontaine, b. 2000

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)

FormalMadame, Monsieur,Dear Fontaine, (English)
InformalMadame, Monsieur,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 41 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Fontaine
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201012K#3,012
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200012K#2,856
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202011K#3,069
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19618.8K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19518.5K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19717.8K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19817.7K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19417.3K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19917.2K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19315.8K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19215.8K—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20085.6K#84

Reference works 6

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 Fontaine mean, and where does it come from?
fountain Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Fontaine have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 45 thousand people named Fontaine in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fontaine.
Where is Fontaine most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fontaine is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 171 people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
How do you pronounce Fontaine?
A machine transcription gives /fɔ̃tɛn/ (IPA) for French.
How common is the name Fontaine?
In the United States, the national register counted 11,901 people named Fontaine in 2010, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
How common is Fontaine compared with other names?
In France, Fontaine is the 34th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Fontaine?

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

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, “Fontaine” — the 34th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Fontaine parses inside a full name →