Starr

surname · Latin script

Meaning: perhaps from a nickname for someone with a streak of white hair, or perhaps for someone living in a house with the sign of a star

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

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

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 8.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CACanada≈1 in 11K
  • USUnited States1 in 11K

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)

≈91,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
482 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.2K (inferred from the name graph)

North Korea, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

StarrLatin(measured from records)
스타Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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)

perhaps from a nickname for someone with a streak of white hair, or perhaps for someone living in a house with the sign of a star.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Starr 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 Starr is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈91,000 est.≈1 in 15K—Starr10
US United States#92230,3631 in 11K30KStarr482
PK Pakistan—≈15,000 est.≈1 in 15K—Starr7
GB United Kingdom—≈5,400 est.≈1 in 12K3.4KStarr187
KP North Korea#924≈4,200 est.≈1 in 6.2K—Starr3
CA Canada—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 11K3Starr168
AU Australia#802≈3,200 est.≈1 in 8.1K3Starr151
IE Ireland#875≈570 est.≈1 in 9.1K—Starr36
IS Iceland—≈53 est.≈1 in 6.6K1Starr3

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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Starr is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Stařř, Starř

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Stärr

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Burkina Faso, Canada

    Also written Stãrr, Stârr

  • Greek surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Star, Σταρ, Stàr

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, United Kingdom

    Also written Stärr

59 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)

Starr 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 steorra, ME sterre ‘star’, used as a nickname or personal name; first attested Leuenot Sterre 1066 DB (Db)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, steorra). The word was also used in a transferred sense of a patch of white hair on the forehead of a horse, and so per¬ haps the name denoted someone with a streak of white hair. It is possibly also a house name, for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of a star. Var.: Starman (also ‘servant of S.’).

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, A receipt given by Jews on payment of debt.

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

  • In Irish, A Cromwellian family now fairly numerous in north Tipperary. It is also in Ulster, frequently spelt Starrs there. The name is of the nickname type

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

  • In German, stiff, rigid, paralyzed

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German

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)

19201940196019802000Ben Starr, b. 1921Bart Starr, b. 1934Beau Starr, b. 1944Kenneth Starr, b. 1946Mike Starr, b. 1950Brenda K. Starr, b. 1966Antony Starr, b. 1975Martin Starr, b. 1982Bobbi Starr, b. 1983Rachel Starr, b. 1983

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 Starr,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 43 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Starr
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201030K#1,158
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202029K#1,176
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200028K#1,135
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)20023.4K#2,326
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 Starr mean, and where does it come from?
perhaps from a nickname for someone with a streak of white hair, or perhaps for someone living in a house with the sign of a star. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How common is the name Starr?
In the United States, the national register counted 30,363 people named Starr in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
How common is Starr compared with other names?
In Australia, Starr is the 802nd most common surname of 552,428 surnames recorded there.
How do you pronounce Starr?
A machine transcription gives /stɑɹ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Starr have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 91 thousand people named Starr in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled starr.

What do you want to know about Starr?

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/starr

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, “Starr” — the 802nd most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Starr parses inside a full name →