The Vest Family Name

Search old registers for Vest and you will soon meet West too. Taken at its root, Vest points to “From the west”.

• Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them.
• The 2010 US Census counted 11,405 people named Vest, ranking it number 3,164 among American surnames. That puts it among the top 5,000 US surnames. 474 people born in France between 1891 and 2000 carried the Vest name at birth.
• The two spellings differ in a small detail: Vest has “v” where West has “w”.

Vest coat of arms

Looking for a Vest coat of arms? Arms were granted to families, not to surnames, and our research shows which heraldic tradition fits yours. For the full story, order the Vest surname pack.