Moore
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) From places named Moore/More or a resident on a moor/fen; (ii) from the personal name More; (iii) nickname for a dark-complexioned person; (iv) Scottish/Welsh nickname for a large man; (v) from Ir
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mʊɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Moore is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 10th most common surname.
- IEIreland≈1 in 389(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 449
- USUnited States1 in 459
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #107 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 644 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 389 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,300,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
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)
(i) From places named Moore/More or a resident on a moor/fen; (ii) from the personal name More; (iii) nickname for a dark-complexioned person; (iv) Scottish/Welsh nickname for a large man; (v) from Irish Gaelic Ó Mordha, ‘great/proud/stately’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Moore 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈2,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 603 | — | Moore | 50 |
| US United States | #16 | 724,374 | 1 in 459 | 724K | Moore | 644 |
| GB United Kingdom | #19 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 449 | listed | Moore | 381 |
| CA Canada | #16 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 534 | 1 | Moore | 293 |
| EG Egypt | #551 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Moore | 38 |
| IE Ireland | #10 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 389 | — | Moore | 148 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1,657 | 1 in 453 | 1.7K | — | 15 |
| IS Iceland | #43 | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 447 | — | Moore | 24 |
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; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Moore 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, O Mordha ‘noble’; sept of Leix. Conor O’More defeated the Earl of Essex in 1183; the tomb of Malachi O’More is in their Cistercian abbey.
as a nameIrish family names
In English, from Middle English more ‘moor’, ‘marsh’, ‘fen’, ‘area of uncultivated land’ (Old English mor), hence a topographic name for someone who lived in such a place or a habitational name from any of the various places named with this word, as for example Moore in Cheshire or More in Shropshire.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from a personal name (Latin Maurus ‘Moor’). This name was borne by various early Christian saints. The personal name was introduced to England by the Normans, but it was never as popular in England as it was on the Continent.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from Old French more ‘Moor’ (Latin maurus). The Latin term denoted a native of northwestern Africa, but in medieval England the word came to be used informally as a nickname for any swarthy or dark-skinned person.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Mordha ‘descendant of Mordha', a byname meaning ‘great’, ‘proud’, or ‘stately’.
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)
- Thomas Mooreb. 1779IEIrish poet, singer and songwriter (1779–1852)
- George Edward Mooreb. 1873GBEnglish philosopher (1873–1958)
- Marianne Mooreb. 1887USAmerican poet (1887–1972)
- Roger Mooreb. 1927GBEnglish actor (1927–2017)
- Bobby Mooreb. 1941GBEnglish association football player (1941–1993)
- Michael Mooreb. 1954USAmerican filmmaker and author (born 1954)
- Julianne Mooreb. 1960USBritish-American actress and author
- Demi Mooreb. 1962USAmerican actress and producer (born 1962)
- Jill Kellyb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Mandy Mooreb. 1984USAmerican actress and singer (born 1984)
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 56 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 724K | #18 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 699K | #16 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 696K | #18 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1.7K | #42 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- 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
- 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 Moore mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) From places named Moore/More or a resident on a moor/fen; (ii) from the personal name More; (iii) nickname for a dark-complexioned person; (iv) Scottish/Welsh nickname for a large man; (v) from Ir… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Moore have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.3 million people named Moore in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled moore.
- How do you pronounce Moore?
- A machine transcription gives /mʊɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Moore?
- In the United States, the national register counted 724,374 people named Moore in 2010, about 1 in 459 residents.
- How common is Moore compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Moore is the 10th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Moore?
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/mooreThe 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, “Moore” — the 10th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.