Ness
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person who lives on a promontory or headland, from Old Norse nes
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ness is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 87th most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 1.5K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 21K
- CACanada≈1 in 23K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 389 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
11,037 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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 on a promontory or headland, from Old Norse nes.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Ness, 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)
Ness 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 | — | 11,037 | 1 in 30K | 11K | Ness | 389 |
| NO Norway | #273 | 3,582 | 1 in 1.5K | 3.6K | Ness | 71 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 1.1K | Ness | 150 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | Ness | 5 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Ness | 20 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 23K | 1 | Ness | 118 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #87 | — | — | — | Ness | 2 |
11,037 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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)
Ness 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, from OE næss ‘headland’, as at Ness in Gloucestershire or Cheshire/North Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Robert de Nesse 1177 P (Y)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Possibly locational, from one of the Ness promontories; medieval forename form Nesius/Nessus. Linked traditionally to MacNeish.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, who lived on a headland or promontory, Northern ME Nesterov Newall 386 ness (ON nes), or habitation name from any of the places named with this term, for example Ness in Ches. and N Yorks. The name is now most common in Scotland. It coincides in form with the Gael, personal name Ness, but there is no evidence to suggest that the two are connected.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Scandinavian (especially Norwegian), Scottish, and northern English: topographic name for someone who lived on a headland or promontory. Old Norse nes, or a habitational name from any of the numerous places named with this word; there are over a hundred farms in Norway and many settlements in Scotland and northern England so named
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, who lived on a headland or promontory. Northern ME ness (ON nes), or habitation name from any of the places named with this term, for example Ness in Ches. and N Yorks. The name is now most common in Scotland. It coincides in form with the Gael, personal name Ness, but there is no evidence to suggest that the two are connected.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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 Nessb. 1885GBEnglish footballer (1885-1957)
- Eliot Nessb. 1903USAmerican Prohibition agent (1903-1957)
- Brigid Guinnessb. 1920IEnot in their usual nameEnglish noblewoman
- Arlen Nessb. 1939USAmerican entrepreneur and motorcyclist (1939–2019)
- Mike Nessb. 1962USAmerican musician
- Patrick Nessb. 1971USAmerican-British novelist and children's writer
- Jennifer Nessb. 1972GBBritish actress
- Aaron Nessb. 1990USAmerican ice hockey player
- Jamie Nessb. 1991GBScottish association football player
- Marilyn Nessfilm producer and director
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 47 sources across 24 countries.
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)
- 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
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 are other forms of the name Ness?
- In the etymology graph, Nessa and Neß are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Ness mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives on a promontory or headland, from Old Norse nes. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Ness?
- A machine transcription gives /nɛs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Ness have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Ness, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ness.
- Where is Ness most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ness is densest in Norway — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Ness?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,037 people named Ness in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
- How common is Ness compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Ness is the 87th most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ness?
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/nessThe 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, “Ness” — the 87th most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.