Foss
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from a place named from Old English foss or Old French fosse, both meaning 'ditch'; possibly from the Fosse Way
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/fɑs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Foss is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 83rd most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 883(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 11K
- CACanada≈1 in 20K
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)
- Sources
- 404 (measured from records)
- 1 in 883 (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from a place named from Old English foss or Old French fosse, both meaning 'ditch'; possibly from the Fosse Way
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)
Foss 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | — | Foss | 4 |
| US United States | — | 14,094 | 1 in 24K | 14K | Foss | 404 |
| NO Norway | #100 | 6,194 | 1 in 883 | 6.2K | Foss | 92 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Foss | 128 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Foss | 123 |
| DK Denmark | #649 | 524 | 1 in 11K | 524 | Foss | 89 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | Foss | 7 |
| AX Åland Islands | #409 | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Foss | 2 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #83 | — | — | — | Foss | 1 |
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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the is-arnastofnun-aettarnofn 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)
Foss 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, 'dweller by the ditch' from OE foss; first attested John del Fosse 1199 MemR (Sx)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Initialism of Free and Open Source Software.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Icelandic, a waterfall (permanent flow of water over the edge of a cliff)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, second-person singular subjunctive present indefinite of fosik
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Faroese, indefinite accusative singular of fossur
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)
- Eugene Fossb. 1858USAmerican politician (1858-1939)
- Frank Fossb. 1895USAmerican pole vaulter (1895–1989)
- Tore Fossb. 1901NOTheatre singer and actor (1901–1968)
- Joe Fossb. 1915USUnited States Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient (1915–2003)
- Lukas Fossb. 1922USAmerican composer (1922-2009)
- Chris Fossb. 1946GBBritish artist (born 1946)
- Per-Kristian Fossb. 1950NONorwegian politician
- Dennis Schmidt-Foßb. 1970DEnot in their usual nameGerman actor and voice actor
- Kristian Bang Fossb. 1977DKDanish novelist
- Tobias Fossb. 1997NONorwegian cyclist
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 35 sources across 19 countries.
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Foss mean, and where does it come from?
- person from a place named from Old English foss or Old French fosse, both meaning 'ditch'; possibly from the Fosse Way Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Foss?
- In the etymology graph, Fosse is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Foss?
- A machine transcription gives /fɑs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Foss have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 150 thousand people named Foss in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled foss.
- Where is Foss most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Foss is densest in Norway — about 1 in 883 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Foss?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,094 people named Foss in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Foss compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Foss is the 83rd most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Foss?
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/fossThe 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, “Foss” — the 83rd most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.