Macmillan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Gaelic MacMhaolain, ‘son of the bald/tonsured one’; records start 1263 with Gillemor MacMolan in Lanarkshire
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/məkmɪlən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Macmillan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 9.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 15K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 20K
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)
- Sources
- 336 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Gaelic MacMhaolain, ‘son of the bald/tonsured one’; records start 1263 with Gillemor MacMolan in Lanarkshire.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Macmillan 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Macmillan | 6 |
| US United States | — | 5,688 | 1 in 58K | 5.7K | Macmillan | 336 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | Macmillan | 183 |
| CA Canada | #810 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | — | Macmillan | 207 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Macmillan | 136 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Macmillan | 71 |
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; the scottish-surnames-ross-1994 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Macmillan is also recorded in 4 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 Gaelic MacMhaolain ‘son of the tonsured one’; first attested John Macmullan, Makmylan 1454–87 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A surname of Scottish origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, publishing house; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Croatian, britanski političar, premijer konzervativne vlade 1957—1963; jedan od važnijih političkih suradnika W. Churchilla u 2. svjetskom ratu, vođa konzervativaca od 1957; dao ostavku nakon što je propao njegov pokušaj da Veliku Britaniju uključi u EEZ
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Ernest MacMillanb. 1893CACanadian conductor (1893–1973)
- Harold Macmillanb. 1894GBPrime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963
- Dorothy Macmillanb. 1900GBnoblewoman; English socialite; wife of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
- Edwin Mattison McMillanb. 1907USnot in their usual nameAmerican physicist (1907-1991)
- Maurice Macmillanb. 1921GBBritish politician (1921-1984)
- Norma MacMillanb. 1921CACanadian actress (1921-2001)
- Margaret MacMillanb. 1943CACanadian historian
- James MacMillanb. 1959GBScottish composer and conductor (born 1959)
- David MacMillanb. 1968GBBritish chemist (1968-)
- Shannon MacMillanb. 1974USAmerican soccer player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 29 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.7K | #6,041 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.6K | #5,725 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.5K | #6,026 |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Macmillan mean, and where does it come from?
- From Gaelic MacMhaolain, ‘son of the bald/tonsured one’; records start 1263 with Gillemor MacMolan in Lanarkshire. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Macmillan?
- A machine transcription gives /məkmɪlən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Macmillan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Macmillan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled macmillan.
- How common is the name Macmillan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,688 people named Macmillan in 2010, about 1 in 58 thousand residents.
- How common is Macmillan compared with other names?
- In Canada, Macmillan is the 810th most common surname of 699,524 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Macmillan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/macmillanThe 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, “Macmillan” — the 810th most common surname in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.