Bailey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: steward or similar household official; also someone who lived by the outer wall of a castle; or a person from Bailey, Lancashire
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/beɪli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bailey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 64th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 633(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 849
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.1K
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)
- #302 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 588 (measured from records)
- 1 in 227 (inferred from the name graph)
277,845 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
steward or similar household official; also someone who lived by the outer wall of a castle; or a person from Bailey, Lancashire
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)
Bailey 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 | #64 | 277,845 | 1 in 1.2K | 278K | Bailey | 588 |
| GB United Kingdom | #55 | ≈77,000 est. | ≈1 in 849 | 17 | Bailey | 358 |
| CA Canada | #72 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 15 | Bailey | 254 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Bailey | 32 |
| IT Italy | #124 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Bailey | 48 |
| AU Australia | #74 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 117 | Bailey | 263 |
| JM Jamaica | #22 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 633 | — | Bailey | 42 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 446 | 1 in 227 | 446 | — | 11 |
| GD Grenada | — | 99 | 1 in 1.1K | 99 | — | 9 |
277,845 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 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)
Bailey is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, (1) from OFr bailli/baillis ‘bailiff’; first attested Roger le baylly 1230 P (Sf). (2) from ME bayle ‘bailey’; first attested John ate Baylie 1317 AssK. (3) from Bailey, Lancashire; first attested Ralph de Baylegh 1246 AssLa
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, The outer wall of a feudal castle.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Old French; administrative official
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Frederick Douglassb. 1817USnot in their usual nameAfrican-American social reformer, writer, and abolitionist (c. 1818–1895)
- Pearl Baileyb. 1918USAmerican actress and singer (1918–1990)
- David Baileyb. 1938GBBritish photographer (born 1938)
- John Baileyb. 1942USAmerican cinematographer and film director (1942–2023)
- G. W. Baileyb. 1944USactor
- Donovan Baileyb. 1967CACanadian athlete, Olympic medalist
- Eion Baileyb. 1976USAmerican actor
- Laura Baileyb. 1981USAmerican voice actress
- Jonathan Baileyb. 1988GBEnglish actor
- Halle Baileyb. 2000USAmerican singer and actress (born 2000)
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 80 sources across 40 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 278K | #72 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 269K | #73 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 266K | #66 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 446 | #34 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 99 | #130 |
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 Bailey mean, and where does it come from?
- steward or similar household official; also someone who lived by the outer wall of a castle; or a person from Bailey, Lancashire Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Bailey have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 278 thousand people named Bailey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bailey.
- Where is Bailey most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bailey is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 227 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bailey?
- In the United States, the national register counted 277,845 people named Bailey in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Bailey compared with other names?
- In the United States, Bailey is the 64th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Bailey?
- A machine transcription gives /beɪli/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Bailey?
- In the etymology graph, Bayley is a form of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Bailey?
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/baileyThe 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, “Bailey” — the 64th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.