Pearson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: son of Piers (Peter); first attested John Pierisson 1332 SRWa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈpɪɹsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pearson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 2.2K
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)
- #772 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈470,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, 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)
son of Piers (Peter); first attested John Pierisson 1332 SRWa
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pearson 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 | — | ≈470,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Pearson | 18 |
| US United States | #238 | 101,836 | 1 in 3.3K | 102K | Pearson | 548 |
| GB United Kingdom | #108 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 56K | Pearson | 289 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | — | Pearson | 19 |
| CA Canada | #203 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 3 | Pearson | 233 |
| AU Australia | #192 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 1 | Pearson | 230 |
| NZ New Zealand | #162 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Pearson | 124 |
| GY Guyana | — | 371 | 1 in 2K | 371 | — | 4 |
| IS Iceland | #417 | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Pearson | 8 |
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); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); 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)
Pearson 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, A patronymic surname transferred from the given name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of Piers’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Lester B., Canadian politician
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, {Nobel 1957); airport, Toronto
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Hijo de Pedro
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Karl Pearsonb. 1857GBEnglish mathematician, biometrician, and eugenicist (1857–1936)
- Egon Sharpe Pearsonb. 1895GBBritish statistician (1895-1980)
- Lester B. Pearsonb. 1897CA14th Prime Minister of Canada, from 1963 to 1968 (1897–1972)
- Richard Pearsonb. 1918GBEnglish actor (1918–2011)
- Neil Pearsonb. 1959GBBritish actor
- Richard Pearsonb. 1961USAmerican film editor
- Ryne Douglas Pearsonb. 1964USAmerican writer
- Keir Pearsonb. 1966USAmerican rower and Oscar nominated film screenwriter
- Eric Pearsonb. 1980USAmerican screenwriter
- Sally Pearsonb. 1986AUAustralian short-distance runner and hurdler
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 55 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 102K | #308 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 99K | #281 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 98K | #317 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 56K | #101 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 371 | #295 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 Pearson mean, and where does it come from?
- son of Piers (Peter); first attested John Pierisson 1332 SRWa Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Pearson?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpɪɹsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pearson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 469 thousand people named Pearson in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pearson.
- How common is the name Pearson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 101,836 people named Pearson in 2010, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Pearson compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Pearson is the 108th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pearson?
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/pearsonThe 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, “Pearson” — the 108th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.