Morse
surname · Latin script
Meaning: either from Moore (Moor) or Morris (Maurice); first attested Thomas Morse 1434 FFEss
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɔs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Morse is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 7.8K
- USUnited States1 in 8K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 491 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
41,774 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
either from Moore (Moor) or Morris (Maurice); first attested Thomas Morse 1434 FFEss
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Morse 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #717 | 41,774 | 1 in 8K | 42K | Morse | 491 |
| GB United Kingdom | #687 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.5K | — | Morse | 212 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Morse | 34 |
| CA Canada | #783 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | — | Morse | 154 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | Morse | 13 |
| IE Ireland | #628 | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Morse | 21 |
| NZ New Zealand | #709 | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Morse | 47 |
41,774 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; the xinhua-italian-manual register. 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)
Morse 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.
Americanized form of any of various like-sounding Jewish surnames, especially Moses. Compare Morris. FOREBEARSI Samuel Morse (1791-1872), inventor of the electric telegraph and of Morse code, was a direct descendant of Anthony Morse of Wiltshire, England, who had emigrated to MA in 1635.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A surname transferred from the given name, variant of Morris, from the given name Maurice.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, a different form of Morris
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Samuel, US inventor
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
variant of Morris.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Samuel Morseb. 1791USAmerican inventor and painter (1791–1872)
- Oliver A. Morseb. 1815USAmerican politician (1815–1870)
- Marston Morseb. 1892USAmerican mathematician (1892–1977)
- Philip McCord Morseb. 1903USAmerican physicist (1903–1985)
- Barry Morseb. 1918GBBritish-Canadian actor (1918-2008)
- Robert Morseb. 1931USAmerican actor
- Susan E. Morseb. 1952USAmerican film editor
- David Morseb. 1953USAmerican actor
- Steve Morseb. 1954USAmerican guitarist
- Neal Morseb. 1960USAmerican rock musician
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 29 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 42K | #824 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 41K | #762 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 40K | #854 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 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 Morse mean, and where does it come from?
- either from Moore (Moor) or Morris (Maurice); first attested Thomas Morse 1434 FFEss Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Morse?
- A machine transcription gives /mɔs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Morse have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 42 thousand people named Morse, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled morse.
- How common is the name Morse?
- In the United States, the national register counted 41,774 people named Morse in 2010, about 1 in 8.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Morse compared with other names?
- In the United States, Morse is the 717th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Morse?
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/morseThe 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, “Morse” — the 717th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.