Budd
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from the medieval personal name Budde, from a nickname for a fat person, perhaps based on Old English budda 'beetle'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈbəd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Budd is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 19K
- CACanada≈1 in 23K
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
- 369 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.7K (inferred from the name graph)
8,026 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Grenada
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)
from the medieval personal name Budde, from a nickname for a fat person, perhaps based on Old English budda 'beetle'
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)
Budd 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 | 8,026 | 1 in 41K | 8K | Budd | 369 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Budd | 198 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Budd | 135 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 1 | Budd | 139 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Budd | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Budd | 55 |
| GD Grenada | 24 | 1 in 4.7K | 24 | — | 1 |
8,026 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); 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)
Budd 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, from OE Budda, from budda ‘beetle’; first attested Brihtmerus Budde c1025 OEByn (C)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, applied to a thickset or plump person, for reasons that are now obscure. By the ME period it had become a com¬ mon personal name, with derivs. showing hypocoristic suffixes, Budecok and Budekin. Reaney, however, derives the name from OE budda beetle. Dims, (of i): Ger.: Bocklin. Fr.: Bo(c)quet, Bouquet, Bo(c)quel. Dim.: Budcock. Patrs.: Budds; Budding. Bucket! see Burkett Budde see Buttner
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Welsh, benefit, profit, gain
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, past participle of bu
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)
- William Buddb. 1811GBEnglish physician and epidemiologist (1811–1880)
- Harold Buddb. 1936USAmerican musician (1936–2020)
- Boyce Buddb. 1939USAmerican rower
- Roy Buddb. 1947GBBritish jazz musician and composer (1947-1993)
- Barbara Buddb. 1953CACanadian actress
- Zola Buddb. 1966ZASouth African competitive runner
- Robin Buddb. 1967USAmerican director
- Graham E. Buddb. 1968GBBritish paleontologist
- Ted Buddb. 1971USUnited States Senator from North Carolina since 2023
- Sibylla Buddb. 1977AUAustralian actress
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 33 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8K | #4,427 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.9K | #4,130 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.7K | #4,478 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 24 | #199 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
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 Budd mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval personal name Budde, from a nickname for a fat person, perhaps based on Old English budda 'beetle' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Budd?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈbəd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Budd have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.0 thousand people named Budd, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled budd.
- Where is Budd most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Budd is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 4.7 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Budd?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,026 people named Budd in 2010, about 1 in 41 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Budd?
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/buddThe 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, “Budd”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.