Pass
loc · Latin script
Meaning: probably a pet-form of Pascall; first attested Passe de Albeneye 1230 P (Nt) (A Dictionary of English Surnames)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Pass is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 4,583 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Pass is also written Пасс in Cyrillic and 패스 in Korean (Hangul).
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 39Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 73K
- CACanada≈1 in 100Kfew records
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 Pass 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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 307 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
4,583 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Pass in other scripts: Cyrillic and Korean (Hangul)
(measured from records)Locally spelled Paß in DE Germany and Päss in EE Estonia.
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)probably a pet-form of Pascall; first attested Passe de Albeneye 1230 P (Nt)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Pass is found
(measured from records)Pass 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 | 4,583 | 1 in 73K | 4.6K | Pass | 307 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 39K | 2.4K | Pass | 142 |
| DE Germany | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 126K | listed | Paß | 64 |
| AU Australia | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Pass | 96 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 141K | — | Pass | 15 |
| AT Austria | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Pass | 29 |
| EE Estonia | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 17K | 64 | Päss | 10 |
4,583 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); the dfa-band-4 register; 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)Pass 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, To change place.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., ndéwé, léwe, téwé ; it came to pass, i yé wéni or hi iyé wéni winde = pinde; to pass from place to place, dé- téwé; pass over to the other side, déwé kaka wékéi ma; pass through, vo
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
In French, initialism of parcours accès spécifique santé (“specific health access path”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, passport (document granting permission to pass)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Chinese, pass (document granting permission to pass)
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)- Raimo Passb. 1961EEEstonian actor (born 1961)
- Harvey I PassUSresearcher
- Rafael PassUSPh.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2006
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).
Evidence
(measured from records)26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pass mean, and where does it come from?
- probably a pet-form of Pascall; first attested Passe de Albeneye 1230 P (Nt) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Pass?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.6 thousand people named Pass, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pass. After it come United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Pass?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,583 people named Pass in 2010, about 1 in 73 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pass?
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/passThe 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, “Pass” — ranked 6836th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.