Bates
surname · Latin script
Meaning: third-person singular simple present indicative of bate
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Bates 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 2.8K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.2K
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)
- #956 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 541 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)
95,622 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)
third-person singular simple present indicative of bate
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bates 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 | #289 | 95,622 | 1 in 3.5K | 96K | Bates | 541 |
| GB United Kingdom | #184 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Bates | 307 |
| CA Canada | #326 | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 4K | 1 | Bates | 209 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Bates | 15 |
| AU Australia | #281 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Bates | 191 |
| NZ New Zealand | #240 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Bates | 111 |
| IE Ireland | #329 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Bates | 75 |
95,622 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; 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)
Bates 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, ‘son of Bate (i)’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Irish, Usually derived from the forename Bartholomew, this English name is quite numerous in Dublin and north Ulster. It is on record in Ireland since mid-seventeenth century
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Galician, second-person singular present indicative of bater
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, nominative/accusative/vocative plural of batis
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ang, genitive singular of bāt
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)
- Edward Batesb. 1793USAmerican politician, lawyer and judge (1793-1869)
- Henry Walter Batesb. 1825GBEnglish naturalist and explorer (1825–1892)
- William Horatio Batesb. 1860USAmerican ophthalmologist (1860-1931)
- Florence Batesb. 1888USAmerican actress; lawyer (1888–1954)
- Michael Batesb. 1920GBBritish actor (1920–1978)
- Bo Diddleyb. 1928USnot in their usual nameAmerican guitarist (1928–2008)
- Alan Batesb. 1934GBEnglish actor (1934–2003)
- Kathy Batesb. 1948USAmerican film actress and director
- Nick Rhodesb. 1962GBnot in their usual nameBritish keyboardist
- Tyler Batesb. 1965USAmerican musician, music producer, film score composer
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 44 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 96K | #325 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 94K | #293 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 91K | #339 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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 Bates mean, and where does it come from?
- third-person singular simple present indicative of bate Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Bates have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 96 thousand people named Bates, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bates.
- How common is the name Bates?
- In the United States, the national register counted 95,622 people named Bates in 2010, about 1 in 3.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Bates compared with other names?
- In the United States, Bates is the 289th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bates?
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/batesThe 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, “Bates” — the 289th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.