Morrison
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘son of Morris’; recorded from the 1460s
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɔɹɪsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Morrison is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 45th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.6K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.7K
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)
- #705 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 562 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
121,130 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘son of Morris’; recorded from the 1460s. Mauricius attested as a charter witness in 1384.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Morrison 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 | #210 | 121,130 | 1 in 2.7K | 121K | Morrison | 562 |
| GB United Kingdom | #130 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Morrison | 298 |
| CA Canada | #99 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 1 | Morrison | 267 |
| AU Australia | #139 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 3 | Morrison | 233 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.9K | — | Morrison | 20 |
| NZ New Zealand | #114 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Morrison | 131 |
| JM Jamaica | #45 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Morrison | 33 |
| IS Iceland | #284 | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Morrison | 7 |
121,130 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; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Morrison 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, Patronymic from Morris/Maurice; ultimately from Latin Mauricius ‘Moorish’.
as a nameScottish Surnames
patronymic from the personal name Morris.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A Scottish surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, son of Morris
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Irish singer, composer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Philip Morrisonb. 1915USAmerican astrophysicist (1915–2005)
- Toni Morrisonb. 1931USAfrican American novelist, essayist, and academic (1931–2019)
- Jim Morrisonb. 1943USAmerican singer and poet; lead vocalist of The Doors (1943–1971)
- Van Morrisonb. 1945GBNorthern Irish musician
- James Morrisonb. 1954USUS actor and filmmaker (born 1954)
- Temuera Morrisonb. 1960NZNew Zealand actor
- Scott Morrisonb. 1968AUPrime Minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022
- Tommy Morrisonb. 1969USboxer (1969-2013)
- Jennifer Morrisonb. 1979USAmerican actress
- John Randall Henniganb. 1979USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler
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 68 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 121K | #250 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 118K | #231 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 116K | #262 |
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 given-name tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Morrison come from?
- ‘son of Morris’; recorded from the 1460s. Mauricius attested as a charter witness in 1384. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Morrison?
- A machine transcription gives /mɔɹɪsən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Morrison mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘son of Morris’; recorded from the 1460s.
- In which country does Morrison have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Morrison, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled morrison.
- How common is the name Morrison?
- In the United States, the national register counted 121,130 people named Morrison in 2010, about 1 in 2.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Morrison compared with other names?
- In the United States, Morrison is the 210th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Morrison?
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/morrisonThe 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, “Morrison” — the 210th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.