Mere
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Child; also the star of the sea; Polynesian
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/meɾe/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mere is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- PEPeru≈1 in 30K
- USUnited States1 in 857K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 185 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,600 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Child; also the star of the sea; Polynesian
Cited for this meaning 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 28 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Mere 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Mere | 19 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Mere | 28 |
| PE Peru | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Mere | 41 |
| FR France | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 154K | 50 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 388 | 1 in 857K | 428 | Mere | 185 |
| GT Guatemala | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Mere | 8 |
| EE Estonia | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 113 | Mere | 19 |
| AL Albania | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 39K | 18 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts); the ee-stat-nimed 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)Mere 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, Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, variant of Meers 2, or of Mars 5.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Hawaiian, a female given name from English, of 19th century usage
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Māori, a female given name, equivalent to English Mary
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Serbo-Croatian, third-person plural present of meriti
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)- Valev Mereb. 1893EEEstonian military personnel (1893-1949)
- Ain-Ervin Mereb. 1903GBEstonian SS officer (1903–1969)
- Silvia Mereb. 1921EEEstonian production designer (1921-2017)
- Argo Mereb. 1981EEEstonian mountaineer (born 1981)
- Kärt Mereb. 1994EEEstonian association football player (born 1994)
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)42 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 428 | #52,367 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 388 | #53,316 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 340 | #56,246 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 113 | #619 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 106 | #740 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 50 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- How do you pronounce Mere?
- A machine transcription gives /meɾe/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Mere mean, and where does it come from?
- Child; also the star of the sea; Polynesian Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- What are other forms of the name Mere?
- In the etymology graph, Mora, May and Mele are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Mere have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.6 thousand people named Mere in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mere.
- How common is the name Mere?
- In the United States, the national register counted 388 people named Mere in 2010, about 1 in 857 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mere?
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/mereThe 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, “Mere”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.