Read
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹid/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Read is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 18th most common surname.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 499as Reid(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 989as Reed
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.2Kas Reed
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 Read 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #195 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 606 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 499 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400,000 named Reed, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est., as Reid
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Reed in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IT Italy and 3 more and Reid in JM Jamaica.
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)
(i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented by female roe deer’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Read 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 | — | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 989 | — | Reed | 34 |
| US United States | #36 | 277,030as Reed | 1 in 1.2K | 277K | Reed | 606 |
| GB United Kingdom | #25 | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 37K | Reed | 319 |
| EG Egypt | #674 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Reed | 32 |
| IT Italy | #49 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 2 | Reed | 51 |
| JM Jamaica | #18 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 499 | — | Reid | 62 |
| IE Ireland | #31 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Reed | 115 |
| GY Guyana | — | 726as Reid | 1 in 1K | 726 | — | 12 |
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); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); 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)
Read 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 rēad 'red' (complexion or hair); first attested Leofwine se Reade 1016–20 OEByn.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, To look at and interpret letters or other information that is written.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, v., ke = ge, kele; gel, léi
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
American, Scottish, and English: transferred use of the English surname. In most cases, this originated as a nickname for someone with red hair or a ruddy complexion (from Old English r ad red; cf. REID ). In other cases, it may have arisen as a local name, from Old English hr od reeds or r od cleared land.
as a word
In Estonian, nominative plural of rida
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)
- George Readb. 1733USAmerican politician (1733-1798)
- Herbert Readb. 1893GBEnglish anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art (1893-1968)
- Leonard Readb. 1898USAmerican academic
- Norman Readb. 1931GBNew Zealand racewalker (1931-1994)
- Phil Readb. 1939GBBritish motorcycle racer (1939–2022)
- Piers Paul Readb. 1941GBBritish writer (born 1941)
- Mike Readb. 1947GBEnglish radio presenter and musician
- James Readb. 1953USAmerican actor
- Mark Readb. 1978GBBritish singer (born 1978)
- Mary Readb. 2005GBEnglish pirate
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 44 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 30K | #226 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 17K | #1,981 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,150 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 13 | #612 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Read mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) medieval nickname for a red-haired or ruddy-faced person, from Middle English read ‘red’; (ii) ‘person who lives in a woodland clearing’; (iii) ‘person from Read’, Lancashire, ‘headland frequented… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Read?
- In the United States, the national register counted 277,030 people named Reed in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Read compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Read is the 18th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Read?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹid/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Read have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 million people named Reed in China, more than in any other country we hold.
What do you want to know about Read?
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/readThe 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, “Read” — the 18th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.