White

• Audio:

  (file)

• As an English surname, from Middle English White, as a nickname for someone with white hair or pale complexion; in some cases from a personal name of the same meaning. See the modern adjective white.
• Also as an English surname, from Old English *wiht (“bend”), found only in placenames, a derivative of the verb wican (“to yield, bend”); compare Wight.
• As a Scottish Gaelic and Irish surname, used as a translation of several Gaelic names containing the element bán and geal, including Mac Giolla bháin (McElwain, Kilbane), Ó Gealagáin (Galligan), Bán (Bane), and Ó Banáin (Bannon).
• Also as a Scottish and Irish surname, an Anglicization of Irish de Faoite, itself from Anglo-Norman le White, le Whyte, from the same source as the English surname.

White (countable and uncountable, plural Whites)

1. A common British and Irish surname transferred from the nickname.
2. A locale in the United States:
   1. A minor city in Bartow County, Georgia; named for its first postmaster.
   2. A city in South Dakota; named for its first European settler.
   3. An unincorporated community in Washington; named for a Washington state judge.
   4. A ghost town in Missouri; named for a local mining official.

• (surname): Whyte, Wight

• According to the 2010 United States Census, White is the 24^th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 660,491 individuals. White is most common among White (65.5%) and Black/African American (28.2%) individuals.

Capitalized due to this racial sense's connotation of (current or historical) European origin, so as to follow the capitalization rules for nationalities and ethne, known in former centuries as “races” (e.g., “the Chinese race”, “the English race”), and also, perhaps, as a way to explicitly distinguish it from the color sense, which is never capitalized outside proper nouns.

White (not comparable)

1. (chiefly US, sometimes Canada and UK) Alternative letter-case form of white (“of or relating to white complexion or Europeans”).
   • 2025 April 8, Sarah Stock, “Five Common Myths About White People — Debunked”, in Rift TV‎^[1]:

     Unfortunately, many White people have been raised to believe that their race is intrinsically more prejudice than others.

White (plural Whites)

1. Alternative letter-case form of white (“European”).
   • 1988, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, Faber & Faber Limited (2021), page 155:

     The Whites on the mission were a special kind of white person, special in the way that my grandmother had explained to me, for they were holy.

   • 2025 April 8, Sarah Stock, “Five Common Myths About White People — Debunked”, in Rift TV‎^[2]:

     To add insult to injury, not only do Whites shame each other but every other race joins in because they are also educated to believe Whites have somehow screwed them over and are still screwing them over.

2. (historical, politics) An anticommunist who fought against the Reds during the Russian Civil War; the term is mostly associated with monarchist forces.

   Hypernym: anticommunist

• withe

• Whyte

White

1. a surname

• English: White
• Yola: Whit, Whitthe

• “le_White”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.