Pierce
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from the male personal name Piers, the standard Anglo-Norman form of Peter
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɪɹs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pierce is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 2K
- USUnited States1 in 2.4K
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)
- #673 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 566 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈790,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, 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 the male personal name Piers, the standard Anglo-Norman form of Peter.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pierce 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 | — | ≈790,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Pierce | 23 |
| US United States | #173 | 138,629 | 1 in 2.4K | 139K | Pierce | 566 |
| GB United Kingdom | #298 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 50K | Pierce | 223 |
| CA Canada | #211 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 8 | Pierce | 199 |
| IT Italy | #295 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | listed | Pierce | 29 |
| TN Tunisia | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Pierce | 11 |
| IE Ireland | #176 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Pierce | 80 |
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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Pierce 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, Norman French form of Pierre/Peter; brought to Ireland by the English. Gaelic forms Piaras and Fiaras arose from it.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, To puncture; to break through.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Franklin, Nth US president
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In French, Variante de Pierre, du latin Petrus « rocher »; fête de la Saint-Pierre.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
English and Irish: variant of PIERS , in use in Ireland from the time of the Norman Conquest up to the present day. In many cases it may represent a transferred use of the English surname derived from the given name in the Middle Ages.
as a word
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)
- Franklin Pierceb. 1804USpresident of the United States from 1853 to 1857
- Barbara Bushb. 1925USnot in their usual nameFirst Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993 (1925–2018)
- William Luther Pierceb. 1933USAmerican neo-Nazi (1933–2002)
- David Hyde Pierceb. 1959USAmerican actor and director
- Ricky Pierceb. 1959USAmerican basketball player (born 1959)
- Wendell Pierceb. 1963USAmerican actor and businessman
- Jeffrey Pierceb. 1971USAmerican actor (born 1971)
- Mary Pierceb. 1975CAFrench tennis player
- Paul Pierceb. 1977USAmerican basketball player (born 1977)
- Bradley Pierceb. 1982USAmerican actor
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 62 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 139K | #202 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 137K | #186 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 132K | #213 |
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 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 Pierce mean, and where does it come from?
- from the male personal name Piers, the standard Anglo-Norman form of Peter. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Pierce?
- A machine transcription gives /pɪɹs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pierce have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 789 thousand people named Pierce in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pierce.
- How common is the name Pierce?
- In the United States, the national register counted 138,629 people named Pierce in 2010, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Pierce compared with other names?
- In the United States, Pierce is the 173rd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pierce?
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/pierceThe 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, “Pierce” — the 173rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.