Carney

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’

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

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

Carney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 36th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 202as Karen(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 210as Karen
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 231as Karen

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Carney itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

882,576 named Karen, 2020

#83 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
662 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 51 (inferred from the name graph)

Czechia, as Karel

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

KarenLatin(measured from records)
קרןHebrew(measured from records)
คาเรนThai(measured from records)
카렌Hangul(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Karen in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’

Sources 1

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

Where in the world(measured from records)

Carney 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 Carney is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#36882,576as Karen1 in 377881KKaren662
GB United Kingdom#33≈310,000 est.≈1 in 2106Karen389
CZ Czechia—208,144as Karel1 in 51208K—2
EG Egypt#306≈150,000 est.≈1 in 694—Karen67
PH Philippines#117≈150,000 est.≈1 in 749—Karen198
AU Australia#29≈110,000 est.≈1 in 2375Karen293
IE Ireland#22≈26,000 est.≈1 in 202—Karen165
NZ New Zealand#27≈21,000 est.≈1 in 23114Karen177

882,576 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); MVČR — living population register 2017; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)

Carney is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Bangladesh

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Qarni, কারনি

  • Greek surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Karnei, Καρνει

52 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)

Carney 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.

  • ‘descendant of Cathamach’, a byname meaning ‘Warlike’. Vars.: (O’)Caherny, O’Camey. Many present-day bearers of these names descend from Tadhg O Catharnaigh, who was killed in battle in 1084. He was nicknamed An Sionnach 'The Fox’, and for this reason the surname has also been Anglicized as Fox.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • ‘descendant of Catharnach', a byname meaning ‘Warlike’. Vars.: (O’)Caherny, O’Carney.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, Art, US actor

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Guerrero victorioso

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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)

190019201940196019802000Art Carney, b. 1918John C. Carney, b. 1956Mark Carney, b. 1965Jay Carney, b. 1965Diana Fox, b. 1965John Carney, b. 1972Patrick Carney, b. 1980Reeve Carney, b. 1983David Carney, b. 1983Karen Carney, b. 1987

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 Carney,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 32 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Carney
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201033K#1,066
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200032K#984
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202032K#1,089
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020249#25,678
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020119#25,678
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)191818—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)192217—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)192014—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)191514—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)195113—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)193713—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)192113—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 Carney mean, and where does it come from?
from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Carney have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 883 thousand people named Karen, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Carney most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Carney itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Czechia's: the national register counts about 1 in 51 people named Karel.
How do you pronounce Carney?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑɹni/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Carney?
In the United States, the national register counted 882,576 people named Karen in 2020, about 1 in 377 residents.
How common is Carney compared with other names?
In the United States, Carney is the 36th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Carney?

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

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, “Carney” — the 36th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Carney parses inside a full name →