Wood
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person who lives in or near a wood, or works in a wood; also from a nickname for an eccentric or irascible person (Middle English wod ‘mad’)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wʊd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wood is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 80th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 666(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 865
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 969
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)
- #349 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 606 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 666 (inferred from the name graph)
250,715 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, 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)
person who lives in or near a wood, or works in a wood; also from a nickname for an eccentric or irascible person (Middle English wod ‘mad’).
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Wood, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wood 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 | #80 | 250,715 | 1 in 1.3K | 251K | Wood | 606 |
| GB United Kingdom | #35 | ≈99,000 est. | ≈1 in 666 | 135K | Wood | 373 |
| CA Canada | #55 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Wood | 291 |
| KP North Korea | #83 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 866 | — | Wood | 2 |
| AU Australia | #53 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 865 | — | Wood | 284 |
| NZ New Zealand | #53 | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 969 | — | Wood | 163 |
| IS Iceland | #124 | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 962 | 1 | Wood | 14 |
250,715 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); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Wood 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, Topographic surname from the word wood; modern English form found widely, with William Wod in Nairnshire in 1295.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from residence in or near a wood; first attested Walter de la Wode 1242 Fees (He).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, The substance making up the central part of the trunk and branches of a tree. Used as a material for construction, to manufacture various items, etc. or as fuel.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, An English name distinct from Woods but often confused with it. Woods is approximately ten times more numerous than Wood. Bibl
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In enm, insane; crazy
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)
- Annie Besantb. 1847GBnot in their usual nameBritish socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator (1847-1933)
- Edward Davis Wood Jr.b. 1924USAmerican screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and film editor
- Natalie Woodb. 1938USAmerican actress (1938–1981)
- Lana Woodb. 1946USAmerican actress
- Ron Woodb. 1947GBBritish rock guitarist, member of The Rolling Stones
- Maggie Hassanb. 1958USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (born 1958)
- Sam Taylor-Johnsonb. 1967GBnot in their usual nameBritish film director (born 1967)
- Elijah Woodb. 1981USAmerican actor (born 1981)
- Evan Rachel Woodb. 1987USAmerican actress
- Chris Woodb. 1991NZNew Zealand association football player
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 57 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 251K | #84 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 247K | #75 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 239K | #91 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 135K | #26 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Wood mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives in or near a wood, or works in a wood; also from a nickname for an eccentric or irascible person (Middle English wod ‘mad’). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Wood?
- A machine transcription gives /wʊd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wood have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 251 thousand people named Wood, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wood.
- How common is the name Wood?
- In the United States, the national register counted 250,715 people named Wood in 2010, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Wood compared with other names?
- In the United States, Wood is the 80th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wood?
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/woodThe 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, “Wood” — the 80th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.