Given name & surname
Read
“a red-haired lady”·“a red-haired man; one who lives near the reeds”
Read is a variant of Reed. One English interpretation is “a red-haired lady.” Read is a variant of Reid. One English interpretation is “a red-haired man; one who lives near the reeds.”
Meaning & origin
What it means
Read is a variant of Reed. One English interpretation is “a red-haired lady.” Read is a variant of Reid. One English interpretation is “a red-haired man; one who lives near the reeds.”
Explained through its name family
Where it comes from
A possible origin is Old English, although the derivation remains uncertain.
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1914. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Read through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 308
- 308 boys · 0 girls
- Most popular year
- 1949
- 14 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for boys is 5 in 2014. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Its largest published annual count for boys was 14 in 1949. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 374 as a first name in 2020; 16,452 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Read’s family of names
Read has a related form in Reid. Read has a related form in Reed. In English usage, Read as a surname has a conventional equivalent in the Russian form Рид.
Inner ring: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 2
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Across languages 1
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Read
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
Appears in
Similar names
If you love Read, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.
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