Dover
loc · Latin script
Meaning: from Dover, Kent; first attested Theoloneus de Doure 1086 DB
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
Dover is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DMDominica1 in 1.5K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 2.3K
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 2.4K
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)
- Record sources
- 367 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
9,742 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from Dover, Kent; first attested Theoloneus de Doure 1086 DB
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Dover 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 | 9,742 | 1 in 34K | 9.7K | Dover | 367 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Dover | 170 |
| CA Canada | ≈800 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Dover | 101 |
| AU Australia | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Dover | 123 |
| IN India | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 3.3M | 53 | Dover | 18 |
| GY Guyana | 331 | 1 in 2.3K | 331 | — | 5 |
| EE Estonia | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | — | 2 |
| DM Dominica | 51 | 1 in 1.5K | 51 | — | 1 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | 43 | 1 in 2.4K | 43 | — | — |
| KY Cayman Islands | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Dover | 1 |
9,742 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; the in-instate-surnames-bystate register; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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)Dover 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, DE. NH, NJ, OH; city. England
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Portuguese, Dover (a city in Kent, England)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, comparative degree of doof
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, apocopic form of dovere
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sco, To doze.
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)- J. Dover Wilsonb. 1881GBShakespearean scholar (1881-1969)
- Cedric Doverb. 1904Dover, Cedric Cyril, entomologist, anthropologist, and poet (1904–1961)
- Kenneth Doverb. 1920GBBritish hellenist and classical philologist (1920–2010)
- Den Doverb. 1938GBBritish politician (born 1938)
- Robert Doverb. 1956USAmerican equestrian
- Eric Doverb. 1967USAmerican musician
- Rupert Doverb. 1967GBHong Kong police officer
- Wayne Doverb. 1973GYGuyanese football player and manager
- Beth Doverb. 1978USAmerican actress
- Jordan Doverb. 1994CACanadian-born Guyanese soccer 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)28 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.7K | #3,651 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.2K | #3,548 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.2K | #3,775 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 331 | #321 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 53 | #821 |
| DM Dominica | Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025 | 2025 | 51 | #176 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 43 | #219 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #37,740 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Dover mean, and where does it come from?
- from Dover, Kent; first attested Theoloneus de Doure 1086 DB Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How common is the name Dover?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,742 people named Dover in 2010, about 1 in 34 thousand residents.
- In which country does Dover have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 9.7 thousand people named Dover, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dover.
- Where is Dover most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dover is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Dover?
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/doverThe 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, “Dover”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.