Perkins
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Son of Perkin’, a medieval name meaning ‘little Peter’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Perkins is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.4K
- USUnited States1 in 2.5K
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)
- #668 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 549 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.1K (inferred from the name graph)
131,440 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, 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)
‘Son of Perkin’, a medieval name meaning ‘little Peter’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Perkins 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 | #183 | 131,440 | 1 in 2.5K | 131K | Perkins | 549 |
| GB United Kingdom | #203 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 22K | Perkins | 244 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Perkins | 13 |
| CA Canada | #242 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Perkins | 174 |
| IT Italy | #356 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Perkins | 37 |
| KP North Korea | #255 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Perkins | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | #209 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Perkins | 106 |
| IE Ireland | #255 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Perkins | 49 |
131,440 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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)
Perkins is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An English and Welsh surname originating as a patronymic from Perkin, a medieval diminutive of Peter.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Anthony, US actor
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilmanb. 1860USAmerican feminist, writer, artist, and lecturer (1860–1935)
- Frances Perkinsb. 1882USWorkers-rights advocate and United States Secretary of Labor 1933–1945
- Anthony Perkinsb. 1932USAmerican actor (1932–1992)
- Carl Perkinsb. 1932USAmerican guitarist
- Millie Perkinsb. 1938USAmerican actress (born 1938)
- Elizabeth Perkinsb. 1960USAmerican actress
- Sam Perkinsb. 1961USAmerican basketball player (born 1961)
- Kieren Perkinsb. 1973AUAustralian swimmer
- Oz Perkinsb. 1974USAmerican actor and filmmaker (born 1974)
- Emily Perkinsb. 1977CACanadian actress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 40 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 131K | #223 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 127K | #212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 126K | #235 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 22K | #318 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
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 Perkins mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Son of Perkin’, a medieval name meaning ‘little Peter’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Perkins have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 131 thousand people named Perkins, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled perkins.
- How common is the name Perkins?
- In the United States, the national register counted 131,440 people named Perkins in 2010, about 1 in 2.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Perkins compared with other names?
- In the United States, Perkins is the 183rd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Perkins?
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/perkinsThe 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, “Perkins” — the 183rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.