Paine
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From the medieval personal name Paine/Payne, via Old French from Latin Paganus ‘country-dweller’, then ‘civilian’, then ‘heathen’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈpeɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Paine is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 15K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
- USUnited States1 in 2.3Kas Payne
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 Paine 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 396 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
142,601 named Payne, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Pain in FR France and Payne in KP North Korea.
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 the medieval personal name Paine/Payne, via Old French from Latin Paganus ‘country-dweller’, then ‘civilian’, then ‘heathen’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Paine 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 | — | 142,601as Payne | 1 in 2.3K | 143K | Paine | 396 |
| IN India | — | 10,050as Pain | 1 in 132K | 10K | Paine | 28 |
| BR Brazil | — | 6,631as Pain | 1 in 32K | 6.6K | — | 1 |
| FR France | #779 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 814 | Pain | 273 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 50K | Paine | 173 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 1 | Paine | 128 |
| KP North Korea | #165 | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Payne | 2 |
| GY Guyana | — | 457as Payne | 1 in 1.6K | 457 | — | 1 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 89as Payne | 1 in 1.1K | 89 | — | — |
142,601 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling payne. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Paine 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, Obsolete spelling of pain.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, pressure (force over surface)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Estonian, bend, crimp, fold
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In arn, blue sky
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In izh, weight
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- James Paineb. 1717GBBritish architect; (1717-1789)
- Robert Treat Paineb. 1731USAmerican lawyer and judge, signer of the US Declaration of Independence (1731-1814)
- Thomas Paineb. 1737USAmerican Founding Father, philosopher, and political activist (1737–1809)
- John Knowles Paineb. 1839USAmerican composer (1839–1906)
- Sumner Paineb. 1868USAmerican sport shooter (1868–1904)
- John Paineb. 1870USAmerican sport shooter (1870-1951)
- Thomas Otten Paineb. 1921USAmerican scientist (1921-1992)
- Robert T. Paineb. 1933USAmerican zoologist (1933–2016)
- Terry Paineb. 1939GBEnglish footballer and manager (born 1939)
- Jack Havenb. 1994USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (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 34 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.5K | #4,171 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.5K | #3,841 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.9K | #4,325 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4.9K | #1,642 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 264 | #29,329 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 19 | — |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 18 | #85,155 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 18 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 14 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 14 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 11 | — |
Reference works 4
- 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 Paine mean, and where does it come from?
- From the medieval personal name Paine/Payne, via Old French from Latin Paganus ‘country-dweller’, then ‘civilian’, then ‘heathen’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Paine?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpeɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Paine have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 143 thousand people named Payne, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Paine?
- In the United States, the national register counted 142,601 people named Payne in 2010, about 1 in 2.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Paine compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Paine is the 165th most common surname of 2,439 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Paine?
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/paineThe 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, “Paine” — the 165th most common surname in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.