Marsh

surname · Latin script

Meaning: person who lives by or in the middle of a marsh or fen

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/mɑɹʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Marsh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 3.1K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.3K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Marsh itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

62,304 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
521 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MarshLatin(measured from records)
มาร์ชThai(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)

person who lives by or in the middle of a marsh or fen

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Marsh, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Marsh 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.

Where Marsh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#45862,3041 in 5.3K62KMarsh521
GB United Kingdom#198≈26,000 est.≈1 in 2.5KlistedMarsh293
CA Canada#385≈8,400 est.≈1 in 4.5K1Marsh211
AU Australia#276≈8,100 est.≈1 in 3.1K3Marsh198
IT Italy#877≈6,300 est.≈1 in 9.9KlistedMarsh34
CZ Czechia—5,038as Mach1 in 2.1K5K——
NZ New Zealand#249≈1,500 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Marsh119

62,304 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; MVČR — living population register 2017. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Marsh is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Mársh, Marşh, Märșh

  • Chinese surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, China, Myanmar (Burma)

    Languages: Chinese, Burmese

    Also written Märśĥ, Màřšĥ

  • Greek surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Mars, Μαρς

71 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Marsh 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 near a marsh’ from OE mersc; first attested Godard le la Merse 1194 P Som.

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, by or in a marsh or fen, OE mersc (for the change of -er- to -ar-, cf. Marchant). Vars.: Mersh; Mars, Mash; Ma(r)shman. Cogns.: Ger.: Ma(r)sch(mann), Merschmann, Morsch(ner). Flem., Du.: Me(e)rsch, Van der Meersch, Vermeersch. Fr.: Marais, Marois; Lemarois; Dumarais, Desmarais. Prov.: Marest, Desmarest. Dim.: It.: Marescotti.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • Transferred use of the surname, in origin a local name for someone who lived on a patch of marshy ground, from Middle English mersche (Old English mersc). It is also used as an informal short form of Marshall, and possibly also as a masculine equivalent of Marsha, by backformation.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, topographic name for someone who lived by or in a marsh or fen. Middle English mershe (Old English mersc), or a habitational name from any of various minor places named with this word, for example in Shropshire and Sussex.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, An area of low, wet land, often with tall grass or herbaceous plants. (Compare swamp, bog, fen.)

    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)

18001850190019502000Othniel Charles Marsh, b. 1831Oliver T. Marsh, b. 1892Mae Marsh, b. 1894Ngaio Marsh, b. 1895Joan Marsh, b. 1913Dottie West, b. 1932Jean Marsh, b. 1934Michele Marsh, b. 1946Matthew Marsh, b. 1954James Marsh, b. 1963

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)

FormalDear Marsh,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 50 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Marsh
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201062K#537
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200061K#494
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202060K#553
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—9#84,164
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—9#18,531
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru 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
  • 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 Marsh mean, and where does it come from?
person who lives by or in the middle of a marsh or fen Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Marsh?
A machine transcription gives /mɑɹʃ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Marsh have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 62 thousand people named Marsh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled marsh.
How common is the name Marsh?
In the United States, the national register counted 62,304 people named Marsh in 2010, about 1 in 5.3 thousand residents.
How common is Marsh compared with other names?
In the United States, Marsh is the 458th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Marsh?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/marsh

The 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, “Marsh” — the 458th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Marsh parses inside a full name →