Jester
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From OFr geste, jeste ‘exploits’; ME gester ‘mimic, buffoon, merry-andrew’; later ‘professional reciter of romances’; first attested John Gestour 1377 ColchCt (A Dictionary of English Surnames)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈd͡ʒɛs.tə/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Jester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 7,587 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.
- IEIreland≈1 in 29Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 44K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 66K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 330 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)
7,587 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Jester
- English:/ˈd͡ʒɛs.tə/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From OFr geste, jeste ‘exploits’; ME gester ‘mimic, buffoon, merry-andrew’; later ‘professional reciter of romances’; first attested John Gestour 1377 ColchCt.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Jester is found
(measured from records)Jester 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 | 7,587 | 1 in 44K | 7.6K | Jester | 330 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Jester | 68 |
| CA Canada | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Jester | 33 |
| DE Germany | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 189K | — | Jester | 64 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 84K | — | Jester | 15 |
| AU Australia | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 81K | — | Jester | 28 |
| IE Ireland | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Jester | 12 |
7,587 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. 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)Jester 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 the Germanic personal name Gastharo, composed of the elements gast ‘warrior’ + heri ‘army’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, occupational name for a jester. Middle English gester.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, One who jests, jokes or teases.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, yeast
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)- George Taylor Jesterb. 1847USAmerican politician
- Beauford H. Jesterb. 1893USAmerican politician (1893-1949)
- Ralph Jesterb. 1901USAmerican costume designer (1901–1991)
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)33 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Jester mean, and where does it come from?
- From OFr geste, jeste ‘exploits’; ME gester ‘mimic, buffoon, merry-andrew’; later ‘professional reciter of romances’; first attested John Gestour 1377 ColchCt. Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Jester?
- In English /ˈd͡ʒɛs.tə/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Jester?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.6 thousand people named Jester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jester. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Malaysia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Jester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,587 people named Jester in 2010, about 1 in 44 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Jester?
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/jesterThe 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, “Jester” — ranked 4429th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.