Baxter
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Scots form of Baker; from Old English becestre ‘woman baker’, later baxster masculine
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bækstɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Baxter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.4K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.3K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 509 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
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)
Scots form of Baker; from Old English becestre ‘woman baker’, later baxster masculine. Recorded from 1200 (Reginald Baxtar).
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Baxter, 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)
Baxter 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 | — | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Baxter | 14 |
| US United States | #559 | 49,033 | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | Baxter | 509 |
| GB United Kingdom | #253 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 3 | Baxter | 283 |
| AU Australia | #301 | ≈7,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | 3 | Baxter | 215 |
| CA Canada | #441 | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 1 | Baxter | 222 |
| NZ New Zealand | #215 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | 12 | Baxter | 111 |
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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Baxter 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, Occupational surname meaning baker; traditional Scots form of the trade name.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, Liueger se Bacestere a1093 OEByn (D); Hanne Bakestre 1260 AssCh; William le Baxtere 1333 FFSf. OE bæcestre, fem. of bæcere ‘baker’. Baxter is found mainly in the Anglian counties and is used chiefly of men. Only two examples have been noted with a woman’s christian name. Fransson found only four.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Transferred use of the surname, which originated in the Middle Ages as an occupational name for a baker, Old English becestre. The -estre suffix was originally feminine, but by the Middle English period the gender difference had been lost; Baxter was merely a regional variant of Baker.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A surname originating as an occupation originating in northern England and in Scotland, a variant of Baker.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘baker’, from Old English bcecestre ‘(female) baker’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Richard Baxterb. 1615GBEnglish Puritan church leader, poet, and hymn-writer
- Elisha Baxterb. 1827USGovernor of Arkansas and Union Army officer (1827-1899)
- Warner Baxterb. 1889USAmerican actor (1889–1951)
- Alan Baxterb. 1908USAmerican actor (1908–1976)
- Anne Baxterb. 1923USAmerican actress (1923–1985)
- Meredith Baxterb. 1947USAmerican actress and producer (born 1947)
- Jeff Baxterb. 1948USAmerican guitarist
- Stuart Baxterb. 1953GBEnglish association football player and manager
- James Baxterb. 1967GBBritish character animator
- Kirk Baxterb. 1972AUAustralian film editor
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 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 49K | #706 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 48K | #647 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 47K | #712 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of English Surnames (Reaney & Wilson, 1991) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
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
- Where does the name Baxter come from?
- Scots form of Baker; from Old English becestre ‘woman baker’, later baxster masculine. Recorded from 1200 (Reginald Baxtar). Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- What does the name Baxter mean?
- Recorded meaning: Scots form of Baker; from Old English becestre ‘woman baker’, later baxster masculine.
- How do you pronounce Baxter?
- A machine transcription gives /bækstɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Baxter have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 248 thousand people named Baxter in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled baxter.
- How common is the name Baxter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 49,033 people named Baxter in 2010, about 1 in 6.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Baxter compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Baxter is the 215th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Baxter?
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/baxterThe 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, “Baxter” — the 215th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.