Marker
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person who lives in a border area, a maker/marker of marks, or a different form of Mercer
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/maka/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Marker is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 52K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 68K
- DKDenmark1 in 8.8K
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)
- Sources
- 318 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.8K (inferred from the name graph)
6,438 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Märker in DE Germany.
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)
person who lives in a border area, a maker/marker of marks, or a different form of Mercer
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Marker 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 | — | 6,438 | 1 in 52K | 6.4K | Marker | 318 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 75K | — | Marker | 5 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Märker | 62 |
| IN India | — | ≈760 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | 7 | Marker | 28 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 87K | — | Marker | 8 |
| DK Denmark | #821 | 670 | 1 in 8.8K | 670 | Marker | 69 |
| LR Liberia | #154 | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Marker | 1 |
| NO Norway | — | 158 | 1 in 35K | 158 | Marker | 16 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Marker | 23 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Marker | 4 |
6,438 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; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); the in-instate-surnames-bystate 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)
Marker 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, Probably from an Old Germanic *Marchari ‘boundary-army’; earliest attested Symon filius Markere 1168 P (D). Also perhaps from OE mearcere ‘notary, writer’.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, possibly an occupational name from an agent derivative of Middle English mark(en) ‘to put a mark on’, although it is not clear what the exact nature of the work of such a ‘marker’ would be.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Jewish (Ashkenazic); occupational name from Yiddish marker ‘servant’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, topographic name for someone who lived by a boundary (see Mark 2). It is notable that early examples of the surname tend to occur near borders, for example on the Kent-Sussex boundary.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, relatively late development of Mercer. There is one family in Clitheroe, Lancashire, who spelled their name Mercer or Marcer in the 16th century, but Marker in the 17th.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Harry Markerb. 1899USAmerican film editor (1899–1990)
- Cliff Markerb. 1903USAmerican football player
- Gus Markerb. 1905CACanadian professional hockey player
- Frederick J Markerb. 1936USEnglish scholar, theatrologist and professor (1936-2019)
- Gary Markerb. 1943USAmerican musician
- David Markerb. 1958mathematician and pedagogue
- Steve Markerb. 1959USAmerican musician
- Nicky Markerb. 1965GBEnglish footballer (born 1965)
- Emily Markerb. 1982historian
- Laurie L. MarkerUScheetah researcher and conservationist
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 23 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.4K | #5,407 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.9K | #5,396 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.5K | #6,043 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 670 | #619 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 158 | #10,056 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #22,227 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- 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
- 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 Marker mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives in a border area, a maker/marker of marks, or a different form of Mercer Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Marker?
- A machine transcription gives /maka/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Marker have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.4 thousand people named Marker, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled marker.
- Where is Marker most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Marker is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 8.8 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Marker?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,438 people named Marker in 2010, about 1 in 52 thousand residents.
- How common is Marker compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Marker is the 154th most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Marker?
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/markerThe 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, “Marker” — the 154th most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.