Caley

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) ‘person from Cailly’ in northern France, or from Cayley, Lancashire; (ii) a different form of MacAulay; (iii) a Manx variant of Callow

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ˈkeɪɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Caley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 56K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 197K
  • CNChina≈1 in 29K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈48,000 people, est.

Sources
280 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

(i) ‘person from Cailly’ in northern France, or from Cayley, Lancashire; (ii) a different form of MacAulay; (iii) a Manx variant of Callow.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Where in the world(measured from records)

Caley counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Caley is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈48,000 est.≈1 in 29K—Caley4
US United States1,6881 in 197K2.3KCaley280
GB United Kingdom≈1,200 est.≈1 in 56K4Caley140
AU Australia≈240 est.≈1 in 105K3Caley71
CA Canada≈210 est.≈1 in 181K5Caley104
NZ New Zealand≈100 est.≈1 in 48K—Caley23

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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); the ca-statcan-baby-names register. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Caley is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, United Kingdom, El Salvador

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Cäley

46 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Caley is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, from Cailly (Seine-Inférieure), or Manx Mac Caalaidhe ‘son of Caoladh’; first attested William Cailgi 1086 DB

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club, a football club based in Inverness, Scotland

    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)

1700180019002000John Caley, b. 1760George Caley, b. 1770Dorothy Caley, b. 1920Don Caley, b. 1945Ken Caley, b. 1960Philip Caley, b. 1962

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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Ms Caley,
InformalHi Caley,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 33 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Caley
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.3K#6,457
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020196#6,457
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)1994109—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2000107—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2003105—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)200498—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)199912—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)199612—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)199711—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)199310—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)19949—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20258—

Reference works 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 Caley mean, and where does it come from?
(i) ‘person from Cailly’ in northern France, or from Cayley, Lancashire; (ii) a different form of MacAulay; (iii) a Manx variant of Callow. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Caley have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 48 thousand people named Caley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled caley.
How do you pronounce Caley?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkeɪɫi/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Caley?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,688 people named Caley in 2010, about 1 in 197 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Caley?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/caley

The 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, “Caley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Caley parses inside a full name →