Fear
surname · Latin script
Meaning: fe(a)re comrade, companion (OE (ge)fera)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Fear is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 45K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 61K
- CACanada≈1 in 130Kfew records
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 243 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 45K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)fe(a)re comrade, companion (OE (ge)fera). 2. nickname for a proud or haughty person, from ME/ere proud {OF fier, L ferns wild, savage). Dims.: Fr.: Fav(e)reau. Vars.: Feare, Phear. Favshevitz see Faivish Patr.: Fears. Favstov see F'aust Fearn see Fern
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Fear 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 45K | listed | Fear | 157 |
| US United States | 1,493 | 1 in 223K | 1.7K | Fear | 243 |
| AU Australia | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 61K | — | Fear | 89 |
| CA Canada | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 128K | — | Fear | 89 |
| PH Philippines | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Fear | 10 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈47 est. | ≈1 in 112K | — | Fear | 28 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2000; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)Fear 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, A strong, unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, miamta, miami- ahgo, mtiamita i dea a-ngé nduwa, lawa = lua, ma- lawa; to fear cause to avoid, jOwi sowi
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In Irish, man (adult male)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Western Frisian, feather
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)- Arthur Fearb. 1902GBWelsh opera singer
- R. T. Fearb. 1909NZbadminton player
- Joan Fearb. 1932NZNew Zealand artist
- Keith Fearb. 1952GBprofessional footballer (born 1952)
- Tracey Fearb. 1959AUNew Zealand netball player
- Peter Fearb. 1973GBEnglish footballer (born 1973)
- Tanya Fearb. 1989GBBritish actress
- Lilah Fearb. 1999USBritish ice dancer
- Sasha Fearb. 2002GBBritish ice dancer
- Andrew T. FearGBhistorian of Antiquity
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)15 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.7K | #15,530 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.7K | #16,240 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.5K | #18,502 |
| 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 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- Where does the name Fear come from?
- fe(a)re comrade, companion (OE (ge)fera). 2. nickname for a proud or haughty person, from ME/ere proud {OF fier, L ferns wild, savage). Dims.: Fr.: Fav(e)reau. Vars.: Feare, Phear. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- What are other forms of the name Fear?
- In the etymology graph, Feare is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Fear mean?
- Recorded meaning: fe(a)re comrade, companion (OE (ge)fera).
- In which country does Fear have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 thousand people named Fear in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fear.
- How common is the name Fear?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,493 people named Fear in 2010, about 1 in 223 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Fear?
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/fearThe 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, “Fear”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.