Rush
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Rush is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: (i) person who lives by an area of rushes; (ii) descendant of Ros, a Gaelic personal name perhaps based on ros ‘wood’.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 6.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 8.4K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.7K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 504 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈150,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Grenada
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)
(i) person who lives by an area of rushes; (ii) descendant of Ros, a Gaelic personal name perhaps based on ros ‘wood’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rush 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 | — | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.6K | — | Rush | 10 |
| US United States | #773 | 39,802 | 1 in 8.4K | 40K | Rush | 504 |
| GB United Kingdom | #913 | ≈7,600 est. | ≈1 in 8.7K | 5.4K | Rush | 209 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Rush | 19 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Rush | 24 |
| NZ New Zealand | #593 | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Rush | 99 |
| SG Singapore | #739 | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Rush | 13 |
| GD Grenada | — | 34 | 1 in 3.3K | 34 | — | 2 |
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); Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 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)
Rush 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 rysc ‘rush’, used collectively; first attested John ate Russh’ 1332 SRSr.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Any of several stiff plants of the genus Juncus, or the family Juncaceae, having hollow or pithy stems and small flowers, and often growing in marshes or near water.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Albanian, Ragusa (former name of Dubrovnik: a city and port in southern Croatia, on the Adriatic Sea)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, a rush (Etymology 2)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, rush (in sport)
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)
- Benjamin Rushb. 1745USAmerican physician, educator, and author (1746-1813)
- Richard Rushb. 1780USformer United States Attorney General and United States Secretary of the Treasury (1780-1859)
- Barbara Rushb. 1927USAmerican actress (1927–2024)
- Bobby Rushb. 1946USAmerican politician
- Geoffrey Rushb. 1951AUAustralian actor (born 1951)
- Deborah Rushb. 1954USAmerican actress
- Ian Rushb. 1961GBWelsh association football player and manager (born 1961)
- Stockton Rushb. 1962USAmerican businessman (1962–2023)
- Brandon Rushb. 1985USAmerican basketball player (born 1985)
- Odeya Rushb. 1997ILIsraeli actress and model
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)
Attested in 41 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 40K | #869 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 37K | #839 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 37K | #918 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5.4K | #1,473 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 34 | #189 |
| 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
- 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 Rush mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person who lives by an area of rushes; (ii) descendant of Ros, a Gaelic personal name perhaps based on ros ‘wood’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Rush?
- In the etymology graph, Rausch, Rohr and Haste are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Rush have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 145 thousand people named Rush in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rush.
- Where is Rush most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rush is densest in Grenada — about 1 in 3.3 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Rush?
- In the United States, the national register counted 39,802 people named Rush in 2010, about 1 in 8.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Rush compared with other names?
- In New Zealand, Rush is the 593rd most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rush?
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/rushThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Rush” — the 593rd most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.