Blake
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘person with a pale complexion or fair hair’; (ii) a form of Black; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Bláthmhaic, ‘descendant of Bláthmhac’, literally ‘son of fame/prosperity’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bleɪk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Blake is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 47th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 1.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.7K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.1K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 557 (measured from records)
- 1 in 641 (inferred from the name graph)
73,797 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
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)
(i) ‘person with a pale complexion or fair hair’; (ii) a form of Black; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Bláthmhaic, ‘descendant of Bláthmhac’, literally ‘son of fame/prosperity’.
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)
Blake 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 | #381 | 73,797 | 1 in 4.5K | 162K | Blake | 557 |
| GB United Kingdom | #244 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 102 | Blake | 285 |
| CA Canada | #352 | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 48 | Blake | 276 |
| AU Australia | #279 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 115 | Blake | 260 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 6 | Blake | 41 |
| JM Jamaica | #47 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Blake | 37 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 84 | 1 in 641 | 84 | — | 10 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 83 | 1 in 1.2K | 83 | — | 2 |
| GD Grenada | — | 58 | 1 in 1.9K | 58 | — | 5 |
73,797 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; 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)
Blake 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, Caddell/Le Blaca; settled in Galway city and county, among the '14 Tribes of Galway'; branches in Connacht and Kildare.
as a nameIrish family names
Transferred use of the surname, which 26 has two quite distinct etymologies. It is both from Old English blec ‘black’ and from Old English blac ‘pale’, ‘white’; it was thus originally a nickname given to someone with hair or skin that was either remarkably dark or remarkably light. It is now quite popular as a boy’s name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Yellow, as butter or cheese.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from black; first attested Walter le Blake 1167 P (D)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, fair-haired
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)
- William Blakeb. 1757GBEnglish poet and artist (1757–1827)
- Madge Blakeb. 1899USactress (1899-1969)
- George Blakeb. 1922GBBritish spy, a double agent in the service of the Soviet Union
- Robert Blakeb. 1933USAmerican actor (1933–2023)
- Yvonne Blakeb. 1940GBBritish-born Spanish costume designer (1940-2018)
- Geoffrey Blakeb. 1962USAmerican actor
- Rachael Blakeb. 1971AUAustralian actress
- James Blakeb. 1979USAmerican tennis player
- Steve Blakeb. 1980USAmerican basketball player
- Yohan Blakeb. 1989JMJamaican athletics competitor
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 78 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 74K | #447 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 71K | #450 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 69K | #425 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 84 | #100 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 83 | #179 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 58 | #166 |
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 Blake mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘person with a pale complexion or fair hair’; (ii) a form of Black; (iii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Bláthmhaic, ‘descendant of Bláthmhac’, literally ‘son of fame/prosperity’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Blake have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 74 thousand people named Blake, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled blake.
- Where is Blake most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Blake is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 641 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Blake?
- In the United States, the national register counted 73,797 people named Blake in 2010, about 1 in 4.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Blake compared with other names?
- In the United States, Blake is the 381st most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Blake?
- A machine transcription gives /bleɪk/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Blake?
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/blakeThe 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, “Blake” — the 381st most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.