Phillips

surname · Latin script

Meaning: A surname originating as a patronymic derived from Philip

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/fʲiʎips/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Phillips is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 45th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 688(inferred from the name graph)
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 724
  • USUnited States1 in 922

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)

360,802 people, 2010

#226 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
619 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 166 (inferred from the name graph)

St. Vincent & Grenadines

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

PhillipsLatin(measured from records)
필립스Hangul(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)

A surname originating as a patronymic derived from Philip.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Phillips 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.

Where Phillips is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#45360,8021 in 922361KPhillips619
GB United Kingdom#37≈96,000 est.≈1 in 688106KPhillips360
EG Egypt#957≈39,000 est.≈1 in 2.7K—Phillips31
CA Canada#41≈39,000 est.≈1 in 962—Phillips290
IT Italy#46≈38,000 est.≈1 in 1.6K—Phillips49
NZ New Zealand#38≈6,800 est.≈1 in 724—Phillips149
GY Guyana—1,4021 in 5351.4K—17
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines—6101 in 166610—8
IS Iceland#84≈490 est.≈1 in 720listedPhillips14

360,802 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); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Phillips is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Phillip-S

  • Hindi surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Philips, ফিলিপস, ফিলিপস্

  • Swahili surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Nigeria

    Also written Phillip'S

  • Polish surname22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Bulgaria

    Languages: Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian

    Also written Philips, FiLiPs, Филипс, Filipš

  • Greek surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Also written Philips, FiLiPs, Φιλιπς

70 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Phillips is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, ‘Son of Philip’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • New York, Charleston, Philadelphia

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Irish, In modern times this English name has to some extent taken the place of Philbin. With the prefix Mac it is found in Cavan and Monaghan and there it is usually a branch of the Scottish clan MacDonnell of Keppoch

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

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)

19201940196019802000Sam Phillips, b. 1923Siân Phillips, b. 1933Michelle Phillips, b. 1944William Daniel Phillips, b. 1948Wendy Phillips, b. 1952Ethan Phillips, b. 1955Sally Phillips, b. 1970Todd Phillips, b. 1970Peter Phillips, b. 1977Zara Tindall, b. 1981

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)

FormalDear Phillips,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 59 sources across 35 countries.

Official registers attesting Phillips
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010361K#52
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000352K#47
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020344K#53
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002106K#42
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520251.4K#53
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)2025610#24
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 7

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 Phillips mean, and where does it come from?
A surname originating as a patronymic derived from Philip. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Phillips?
In the etymology graph, Phelps is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Phillips?
A machine transcription gives /fʲiʎips/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Phillips have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 361 thousand people named Phillips, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled phillips.
Where is Phillips most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Phillips is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 166 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Phillips?
In the United States, the national register counted 360,802 people named Phillips in 2010, about 1 in 922 residents.
How common is Phillips compared with other names?
In the United States, Phillips is the 45th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Phillips?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/phillips

The 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, “Phillips” — the 45th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Phillips parses inside a full name →