Stead
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Stead, Yorkshire, meaning ‘estate, farmstead’; or one who looks after stallions, or a sexually voracious man
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/stɛd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Stead is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 13K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 118K
- NONorway1 in 182K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Stead 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 7 (measured from records)
- 1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
2,808 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
person from Stead, Yorkshire, meaning ‘estate, farmstead’; or one who looks after stallions, or a sexually voracious man.
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)
Stead 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 | 2,808 | 1 in 118K | 2.8K | Stead | 6 |
| ES Spain | 64 | 1 in 781K | 64 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 30 | 1 in 182K | 30 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 11 | 1 in 3.5M | 6 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 8 | 1 in 2.2M | 8 | — | — |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 4 | 1 in 13K | 4 | — | — |
| DM Dominica | 1as Sted | 1 in 74K | 1 | — | — |
| GY Guyana | 1 | 1 in 750K | 1 | — | — |
2,808 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; 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)
Stead is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, OE stēda 'stud-horse, stallion'; also OE stede 'farm/estate'; first attested Vchtred Stede 1180 P (D), Richard de Stede 1276 AssLa (Lancashire).
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Stead in W Yorks., or from some other place taking its name from OE stede estate, farm, place. 2. from ME steed stud horse, stallion (OE steda), applied as a nickname to a lusty person or as an occupa¬ tional name to someone responsible for looking after stal¬ lions. Vars.: Steed(e), Stede, Steeds. (Of 2 only): Ste(a)dman; Steedman (chiefly Scotland); Stedmont. Cogns. (of 1): Du.: Stad; Steeman.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A place, or spot, in general; location.
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)
- William Thomas Steadb. 1849GBEnglish newspaper editor (1849–1912)
- Christina Steadb. 1902AUAustralian novelist and short-story writer
- C. K. Steadb. 1932NZNew Zealand writer
- Janice Steadb. 1939NZNew Zealand cricketer
- Micky Steadb. 1957GBEnglish footballer (born 1957)
- Kevin Steadb. 1958GBEnglish footballer (1958-2016)
- Rebecca Steadb. 1968USAmerican children's writer
- Gary Steadb. 1972NZNew Zealand cricket coach and former cricketer
- Erin E. Steadb. 1982USAmerican children's book illustrator, especially picture books with writer and husband Philip C. Stead
- Jon Steadb. 1983GBEnglish association football player
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 28 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,257 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,802 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.7K | #11,273 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 64 | #37,750 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 64 | #37,368 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 30 | #35,493 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 8 | #69,274 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #186,643 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5 | #210,393 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 4 | #178 |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Stead mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Stead, Yorkshire, meaning ‘estate, farmstead’; or one who looks after stallions, or a sexually voracious man. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Stead?
- A machine transcription gives /stɛd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Stead have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Stead, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled stead.
- Where is Stead most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Stead is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 13 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Stead?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,808 people named Stead in 2010, about 1 in 118 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Stead?
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/steadThe 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, “Stead”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.