Boyd

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Perhaps person from Bute (‘island of fire’)

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Boyd is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • IEIreland≈1 in 2.1K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.1K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈550,000 people, est.

#570 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

Sources
555 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Dominica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Perhaps person from Bute (‘island of fire’).

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)

Boyd 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.

Where Boyd is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈550,000 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Boyd21
US United States#146153,4691 in 2.2K153KBoyd555
GB United Kingdom#191≈31,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K5Boyd266
CA Canada#172≈16,000 est.≈1 in 2.4K1Boyd248
IT Italy#388≈12,000 est.≈1 in 5.3K—Boyd27
NZ New Zealand#126≈2,800 est.≈1 in 1.7K11Boyd136
IE Ireland#170≈2,500 est.≈1 in 2.1K—Boyd96
DM Dominica—631 in 1.2K63—3

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); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Boyd is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

87 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Boyd 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, Gaelic buidhe 'yellow'; in Scotland and Ireland from Bute; first attested John Boyde 1301

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Probably a place name from Bute (Gaelic Bód). Early forms include de Boyd (Robertus de Boyd, 1205), de Bodha and Boyt.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In English, (i) John Boyde 1301 SRY. Gael, Ir buidhe ‘yellow’. The Manx name is from Mac Giolla Buidhe ‘the yellow-haired youth’s son’: Conn Mac Gillabhuidhe 1100, McOboy, McBooy 1511, Boid 1617 Moore. (ii) In Scotland and Ireland, from Bute (Gael Bod): Robert de Boyd 1205 Black; Walter de Boht c1272 ib.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, A Scottish and Irish surname from Scottish Gaelic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Irish, This Scottish name is very numerous in Ulster. It appears erroneously as O’Boyd in some of the northern hearth money rolls. In Scotland and Ireland it is usually derived from Bute; there is also a Manx name basically the same as the Irish MacElwee but changed to Boyd. The Boyd branch of the Stuarts claim that it derives from the adjective buidhe, yellow. App. Bibl

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

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)

1850190019502000William Boyd, b. 1895Alan Stephenson Boyd, b. 1922Stephen Boyd, b. 1931Guy Boyd, b. 1943Pattie Boyd, b. 1944Russell Boyd, b. 1944William Boyd, b. 1952Lynda Boyd, b. 1965Billy Boyd, b. 1968John Boyd, b. 1981

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 66 sources across 35 countries.

Official registers attesting Boyd
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010153K#176
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000149K#164
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020147K#182
DM DominicaDominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025202563#165

Reference works 5

  • 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)

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 Boyd mean, and where does it come from?
Perhaps person from Bute (‘island of fire’). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Boyd have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 547 thousand people named Boyd in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boyd.
Where is Boyd most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Boyd is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 1.2 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Boyd?
In the United States, the national register counted 153,469 people named Boyd in 2010, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
How common is Boyd compared with other names?
In New Zealand, Boyd is the 126th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Boyd?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boyd

The 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, “Boyd” — the 126th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Boyd parses inside a full name →