Rawson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: son of Rauf or Rau; first attested William Raufson 1379 PTY
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɹɔsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rawson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 18K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 19K
- CACanada≈1 in 30K
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)
- Sources
- 355 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈30,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Tunisia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
son of Rauf or Rau; first attested William Raufson 1379 PTY
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rawson 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 | — | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Rawson | 5 |
| US United States | — | 6,395 | 1 in 52K | 6.4K | Rawson | 355 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 4.7K | Rawson | 167 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Rawson | 117 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 30K | 1 | Rawson | 99 |
| TN Tunisia | #987 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Rawson | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Rawson | 59 |
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); 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)
Rawson 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, A surname originating as a patronymic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, ‘son of Raw’, a different form of Ralph
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Polish, Rawson (a city, the capital of Chubut, Argentina)
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)
- Rawson William Rawsonb. 1812ZABritish statistician (1812-1899)
- Guillermo Rawsonb. 1821ARArgentine politician (1821–1890)
- Charles A. Rawsonb. 1867USAmerican politician (1867-1936)
- Elvira Rawsonb. 1867ARArgentine physician (1867–1954)
- Arturo Rawsonb. 1885ARPresident of Argentina (1885–1952)
- Ronald Rawsonb. 1892GBboxer (1892–1952)
- Clayton Rawsonb. 1906USAmerican mystery writer (1906–1970)
- Michael Rawsonb. 1934GBBritish middle distance runner (1934-2000)
- Jessica Rawsonb. 1943GBBritish art historian and sinologist (born 1943)
- Farrend Rawsonb. 1996GBEnglish association football player (born 1996)
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 30 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.4K | #5,442 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.3K | #5,076 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.2K | #5,462 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 4.7K | #1,691 |
| 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 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 does the name Rawson mean, and where does it come from?
- son of Rauf or Rau; first attested William Raufson 1379 PTY Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Rawson?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹɔsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rawson have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 30 thousand people named Rawson in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rawson.
- How common is the name Rawson?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,395 people named Rawson in 2010, about 1 in 52 thousand residents.
- How common is Rawson compared with other names?
- In Tunisia, Rawson is the 987th most common surname of 37,763 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rawson?
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/rawsonThe 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, “Rawson” — the 987th most common surname in Tunisia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.