Freeman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE frēomann, frīgmann, 'freeman/free-born man', also used as a personal name; first attested Freman Sceil 1188 P (Ess)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹimən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Freeman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.8K
- USUnited States1 in 2K
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)
- #513 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 577 (measured from records)
- 1 in 384 (inferred from the name graph)
169,149 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
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 OE frēomann, frīgmann, 'freeman/free-born man', also used as a personal name; first attested Freman Sceil 1188 P (Ess)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Freeman 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 | #126 | 169,149 | 1 in 2K | 169K | Freeman | 577 |
| GB United Kingdom | #132 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | listed | Freeman | 303 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Freeman | 21 |
| CA Canada | #175 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Freeman | 222 |
| IT Italy | #264 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Freeman | 51 |
| AU Australia | #169 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | 1 | Freeman | 246 |
| NZ New Zealand | #151 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Freeman | 111 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 140 | 1 in 384 | 140 | — | 16 |
169,149 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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Freeman 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 free person
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘free man’ (i.e. not a serf)
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Old English; a freeborn man
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Irish, This English name, which is found in all the provinces, is sometimes used as the anglicized form of Mac an tSaoir. See MacAteer
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- Kathleen Freemanb. 1919USAmerican actress (1919–2001)
- Al Freemanb. 1934USAmerican actor, director and acting teacher (1934-2012)
- Morgan Freemanb. 1937USAmerican actor and producer (born 1937)
- Paul Freemanb. 1943GBEnglish actor
- Ron Freemanb. 1947USathletics competitor
- Jonathan Freemanb. 1950USAmerican actor
- K. Todd Freemanb. 1965USAmerican actor
- Martin Freemanb. 1971GBEnglish actor
- Crispin Freemanb. 1972USAmerican voice actor
- Cathy Freemanb. 1973AUAustralian short-distance runner
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 51 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 169K | #151 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 163K | #140 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 162K | #159 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 140 | #72 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Freeman mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE frēomann, frīgmann, 'freeman/free-born man', also used as a personal name; first attested Freman Sceil 1188 P (Ess) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How common is the name Freeman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 169,149 people named Freeman in 2010, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Freeman compared with other names?
- In the United States, Freeman is the 126th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Freeman?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹimən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Freeman have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 169 thousand people named Freeman, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled freeman.
- Where is Freeman most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Freeman is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 384 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Freeman?
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/freemanThe 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, “Freeman” — the 126th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.