Smart

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from a medieval nickname for a brisk or efficient person

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 29 countries · latest register: Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines, 2025

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

Smart is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 4.6K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 4.9K
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 6.5K

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.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈33,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
461 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 573 (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)
SmartLatin(measured from records)
스마트Hangul(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)

from a medieval nickname for a brisk or efficient person

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Smart 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 Smart is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria#941≈33,000 est.≈1 in 6.5K—Smart73
US United States—25,5281 in 13K26KSmart461
GB United Kingdom#403≈14,000 est.≈1 in 4.6K21KSmart263
GH Ghana#311≈6,700 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Smart22
AU Australia#469≈5,200 est.≈1 in 4.9K—Smart208
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines—1771 in 573177—3
GD Grenada—1201 in 942120—4

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); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Smart is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, United Kingdom, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, French, Italian

    Also written Smârt, Şmǻřt, Smaŕt, Smārt, Šmäřť

  • Portuguese surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Portugal

    Also written Smärt, Śmáŕť, Šmâřť, Šmàřť, Šmãřț

  • Polish surname32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, North Macedonia, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Macedonian, Czech

    Also written Смарт, Смърт, Šmåřt, Šmàŕt, Šmâŕť

  • Indonesian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, United Kingdom, Nigeria

    Also written Šmãřť

  • Thai given name15 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written สมัชญ์, สมรรถ, สมัชญ, สมชัญ, Samach

  • Greek surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Σμαρτ

61 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)

Smart 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, v., as from pep- per applied to the skin, sule, mo, jule

    as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language

  • In English, ME smart quick, prompt (OE smeart stinging, painful, fromsmeortan to sting, hurt). Var.: Smartman.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • In English, To hurt or sting.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, smart (exhibiting social ability or cleverness)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Maltese, first/second-person singular perfect of smar

    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)
17001800190020002100Christopher Smart, b. 1722John Jamieson Carswell Smart, b. 1920Jean Smart, b. 1951Alan Smart, b. 1963Keith Smart, b. 1964Amy Smart, b. 1976Rebecca Smart, b. 1976Elizabeth Smart, b. 1987Olivia Smart, b. 1997Tamara Smart, b. 2005

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

47 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Smart
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201026K#1,388
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202025K#1,414
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200024K#1,344
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200221K#351
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)2025177#104
GD GrenadaGrenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 20252025120#116
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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 Smart mean, and where does it come from?
from a medieval nickname for a brisk or efficient person Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Smart?
A machine transcription gives /smɑɹt/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Smart have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 33 thousand people named Smart in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled smart.
Where is Smart most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Smart is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 573 people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Smart?
In the United States, the national register counted 25,528 people named Smart in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
How common is Smart compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Smart is the 941st most common surname of 346,007 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Smart?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Smart” — the 941st most common surname in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Smart parses inside a full name →