Tower
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Person who lives near a tower, or maker of white leather cured with alum
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Tower is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Panama.
- PAPanama
- MXMexico
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Panama (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 48 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person who lives near a tower, or maker of white leather cured with alum.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tower counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PA Panama | — | — | Tower | 4 |
| MX Mexico | — | — | Tower | 16 |
| US United States | — | 4.5K | — | 48 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 191 | — | 6 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 36 | — | 1 |
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); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)
Tower 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, dweller by a tower, or one who taws; first attested Elyas de Toure 1202 P (Somerset)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, English word name; tower, tall structure
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, lived near a tower, usually a defensive fortification or watchtower, from ME, OF tur (L turris). 2. occupational name for a maker of white leather, a var. of Tawyer. Dims, (of i): Fr.: Touret(te), Tourot, Tourry. It.; Toretta, Toretti, Torritti, Torrini, Turrini, Torricina, Torricelta. Sp.: Torrecilla(s), Torrijos, Torrejon.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, A very tall iron-framed structure, usually painted red and white, on which microwave, radio, satellite, or other communication antennas are installed; mast.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, control tower (for air traffic)
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)
- Charlemagne Tower Sr.b. 1809USAmerican lawyer and financier
- Reginald Towerb. 1860GBBritish diplomat
- Alan Tower Watermanb. 1892USAmerican physicist (1892–1967)
- Harold Towerb. 1911USAmerican rower (1911–1994)
- Whitney Towerb. 1923USAmerican horse racing journalist
- John Towerb. 1925USAmerican senator from Texas and chairman of the Tower Commission (1925-1991)
- Virginia Norwoodb. 1927USnot in their usual nameAmerican aerospace engineer, inventor, and physicist
- Joan Towerb. 1938USAmerican composer, concert pianist and conductor
- Wells Towerb. 1973USauthor
- Jim Campbellb. 1973USnot in their usual nameAmerican ice hockey 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.5K | #7,421 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.4K | #7,034 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.3K | #7,449 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 191 | #21,947 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 36 | #37,462 |
| 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
- 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 Tower mean, and where does it come from?
- Person who lives near a tower, or maker of white leather cured with alum. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Tower have the most bearers?
- Tower is most frequently recorded in Panama, where it is most often spelled tower.
What do you want to know about Tower?
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/towerThe 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, “Tower”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.