Skipper
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) captain of a ship; (ii) basket-maker; (iii) acrobat, or nickname for a bouncy high-spirited person
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/skɪpɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Skipper is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 29K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 32K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 32K
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)
- Sources
- 357 (measured from records)
- 1 in 9.4K (inferred from the name graph)
10,338 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) captain of a ship; (ii) basket-maker; (iii) acrobat, or nickname for a bouncy high-spirited person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Skipper, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Skipper 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 10,338 | 1 in 32K | 10K | Skipper | 357 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 2.1K | Skipper | 135 |
| GH Ghana | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Skipper | 9 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Skipper | 2 |
| EG Egypt | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 96K | — | Skipper | 6 |
| AU Australia | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Skipper | 104 |
| DK Denmark | 624 | 1 in 9.4K | 624 | — | — |
| IE Ireland | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Skipper | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Skipper | 57 |
10,338 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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Skipper 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 ME skip ‘to jump’, a leaper/jumper or one who moves lightly and rapidly; first attested Geoffrey le Skippere 1285 Ass (Ess)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Originally a nickname from the vocabulary word skipper ‘boss’ (originally denoting a ship’s captain, from Middle Dutch schipper), or else representing an agent derivative of skip ‘to leap or bound’ (probably of Scandinavian origin). It is now sometimes used as an independent given name in the United States. Short forms: Skip, Skipp.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, The master of a ship.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Dutch; a ship’s captain
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
English: originally a nickname from the vocabulary word skipper boss (originally a ship's captain, from Middle Dutch schipper ), or else representing an agent derivative of skip to leap, bound (probably of Scandinavian origin). It is now sometimes used as an independent given name, especially in America. Short forms: Skip, Skipp .
as a word
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)
- John Michael Skipperb. 1815GBartist and solicitor (1815–1883)
- George Skipperb. 1854GBEnglish architect
- Svenn Skipperb. 1947Danish composer (1947–2021)
- Skip Alanb. 1948GBnot in their usual nameBritish musician
- Pat Skipperb. 1958USAmerican actor
- Peter Skipperb. 1958GBEnglish footballer (1958-2019)
- Elix Skipperb. 1967USAmerican professional wrestler
- Magdalena Skipperb. 1969GBBritish geneticist and Editor-in-Chief of Nature
- Graham Skipperb. 1983USAmerican film actor, director, and screenwriter
- Pernille Skipperb. 1984DKDanish politician
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 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 10K | #3,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 10K | #3,285 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.6K | #3,597 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.1K | #3,510 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 624 | #681 |
| 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 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Skipper mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) captain of a ship; (ii) basket-maker; (iii) acrobat, or nickname for a bouncy high-spirited person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Skipper?
- A machine transcription gives /skɪpɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Skipper have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Skipper, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled skipper.
- Where is Skipper most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Skipper is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 9.4 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Skipper?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,338 people named Skipper in 2010, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Skipper?
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/skipperThe 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, “Skipper”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.