Livingstone
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Saxon incomer Leofing plus Scots -ton ‘village, settlement’; first known bearer William Levystone, c.1290
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɫɪvɪŋˌstoʊn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Livingstone is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 17K
- USUnited States1 in 131K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 310 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,100 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uganda, 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)
From Saxon incomer Leofing plus Scots -ton ‘village, settlement’; first known bearer William Levystone, c.1290.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Livingstone 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 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 153K | — | Livingstone | 3 |
| UG Uganda | ≈8,700 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 3 | — | 15 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 1 | Livingstone | 18 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Livingstone | 203 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 79K | — | Livingstone | 38 |
| US United States | 2,539 | 1 in 131K | 2.6K | Livingstone | 310 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 1 | Livingstone | 137 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Livingstone | 78 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Livingstone 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.
variant spelling of Livingston. Li Volsi (224) Southern Italian: from a shortened form of the omen name Deu lu volsi. Old Sicilian form of Dio lo voile ‘God wanted him’ (the son), or ‘God willed it’ (the event).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A Scottish surname from Old English, variant of Livingston.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, David, Scottish missionary and
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, explorer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, Numerous in Ulster. See Levens
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)
- David Livingstoneb. 1813GBScottish missionary and explorer (1813-1873)
- Mrs. Livingstoneb. 1821ZAMissionary and explorer
- Mary Livingstoneb. 1905USAmerican actress (1905-1983)
- Sergio Livingstoneb. 1920CLChilean footballer (1920–2012)
- Ron Livingstoneb. 1925USAmerican basketball player (1925-1991)
- Ken Livingstoneb. 1945GBEnglish politician (born 1945); Mayor of London from 2000 until 2008
- Ian Livingstoneb. 1949GBfantasy writer and entrepreneur
- Sonia Livingstoneb. 1960GBBritish Social psychologist
- Nicole Livingstoneb. 1971AUAustralian swimmer
- Samantha Arsenaultb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican swimmer
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 46 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 191 | #39,388 |
| UG Uganda | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 3 | #282 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1 | #39,388 |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2013 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 1944 | 1 | — |
| TZ Tanzania | INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results | 2020 | 1 | #29 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Livingstone mean, and where does it come from?
- From Saxon incomer Leofing plus Scots -ton ‘village, settlement’; first known bearer William Levystone, c.1290. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Livingstone?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɫɪvɪŋˌstoʊn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Livingstone have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.1 thousand people named Livingstone in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled livingstone.
- How common is the name Livingstone?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,539 people named Livingstone in 2010, about 1 in 131 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Livingstone?
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/livingstoneThe 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, “Livingstone”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.