Courage
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Nickname for a stout person; possibly from Cowridge End, Bedfordshire; or a variant of Kendrick
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kʌɹɪdʒ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Courage is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- FRFrance
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Nickname for a stout person; possibly from Cowridge End, Bedfordshire; or a variant of Kendrick.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Courage is also recorded in 4 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 ME corage, OFr corage/curage ‘stout, courageous’; first attested Walter, William Curage 1254, 1260 FFEss
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, curage courage, stout-heartedness (a deriv. of cuer heart, L cor), which was occasionally used in ME as an adj., nor¬ mally with reference to bodily corpulence. Reaney suggests an alternative derivation from Cowridge End in Beds., but it is doubtful what evidence there is to support this. Dims.: Fr.: Courageot, Courajot.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, courage, guts, initiative
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)
- Miles Courageb. 1873GB(1873-1961)
- James Francis Courageb. 1903NZNovelist, short-story writer, poet, bookseller (1903-1963)
- John R. Courageb. 1915CACanadian politician
- Alexander Courageb. 1919USAmerican orchestrator, arranger, and composer of music, primary for television and film (1919-2008)
- Maurice Courageb. 1926FRFrench diplomat
- Piers Courageb. 1942GBracecar driver (1942-1970)
- Yves Courageb. 1948FRFrench racing driver
- Sylvain Courageb. 1968FRFrench journalist
- Maren Courageb. 1973DEGerman actress, director and talk show host
- Timo Courageb. 1980DEGerman badminton player
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 28 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 335 | #64,212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 311 | #64,054 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 296 | #63,141 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 62 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 57 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 56 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 55 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 54 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 50 | — |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 44 | #33,486 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 43 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 41 | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Courage mean, and where does it come from?
- Nickname for a stout person; possibly from Cowridge End, Bedfordshire; or a variant of Kendrick. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Courage have the most bearers?
- Courage is most frequently recorded in the United States.
- How do you pronounce Courage?
- A machine transcription gives /kʌɹɪdʒ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Courage?
- In the etymology graph, Coraggio, Coraje and Courageux are forms of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Courage?
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/courageThe 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, “Courage”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.