# Butter (surname)

Source: https://namelineage.com/surname/butter/  
Publisher: Name Lineage. Counts from the US Census Bureau; origin and etymology from Wiktionary; bearers from Wikidata. Data updated 2026-11-11.

A surname.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Origin | Dutch |
| Type | occupational, named after the work an ancestor did |
| People in the US (2010 Census) | 562 |
| US rank (2010) | 39,164 of 162,253 |
| How often | about 1 in every 549,369 people |
| Change since 2000 | -2.9% (579 in 2000) |
| Pronunciation | not recorded |
| Variant spellings | none recorded |

## Etymology

Various origins: * From butter, a metonymic occupational surname for a dairyman or seller of butter. * From Old French butor (“bittern”), a nickname for someone who resembled a bittern, perhaps because of his voice. * Borrowed from Dutch and German Butter, possibly a short form of various compound names.

## Who carries it

Share of people named Butter in the 2010 US Census by the Census's own race and ethnicity groups. The Census suppresses a share when the count behind it is small.

| Group | Share |
|---|---|
| White (not Hispanic) | 73% |
| Black (not Hispanic) | 10% |
| Hispanic or Latino (any race) | 8.9% |
| Asian and Pacific Islander | 6.2% |

## Where

Wikidata records people named Butter in the United States.

## People named Butter

- Hannah Wilke, American artist (1940-1993)

## Similar surnames

Butera, Bitter, Buttrey, Boudreau, Bader, Beaudry, Bauder, Botero, Batra, Bator, Bhattarai, Bitar.

## How to read these numbers

A Census count is people alive and counted in 2010, not births, and names occurring fewer than 100 times are not published at all. Ethnicity shares are the Census's own categories.