Ciaran
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ciaran is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 93rd most common given name. Recorded meaning: Irish Gaelic name meaning 'little dark one', from ciar 'dark'.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 12K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 19K
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.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 289 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Irish Gaelic name meaning 'little dark one', from ciar 'dark'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ciaran 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #808 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 22 | Ciaran | 223 |
| IE Ireland | #93 | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 89 | Ciaran | 154 |
| US United States | — | 2,229 | 1 in 149K | 2.1K | Ciaran | 289 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 3 | Ciaran | 133 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 575K | — | Ciaran | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 45K | 10 | Ciaran | 52 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈94 est. | ≈1 in 106K | — | Ciaran | 21 |
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: NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Ciaran is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Irish Gaelic name, pronounced ‘keea-rawn’ and often Anglicized as Kieran. It was originally a byname, a diminutive form of ciar ‘black’. It was borne by two
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In French, Origine irlandaise, « aux cheveux noirs ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Spanish, third-person plural imperfect subjunctive of ciar
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)
- Ciaran McKeownb. 1943GBjournalist (1943-2019)
- Ciaran Maddenb. 1947GBBritish actress
- Ciaran Carsonb. 1948GBIrish poet (1948-2019)
- Ciaran O'Learyb. 1973IEIrish poker player
- Ciaran Hopeb. 1974IEIrish composer
- Ciaran Foyb. 1979IEIrish film director and screenwriter
- Ciaran Donnellyb. 1984GBEnglish footballer (born 1984)
- Ciarán Joyceb. 1987GBBritish actor
- Ciaran Clarkb. 1989GBassociation football player
- Ciaran Chambersb. 1994GBbadminton 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 39 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.1K | #6,993 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 118 | #6,993 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 105 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2017 | 89 | #78 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 22 | #191 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2006 | 10 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 9 | #212 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2007 | 3 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2015 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2015 | 1 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2019 | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Ciaran mean, and where does it come from?
- Irish Gaelic name meaning 'little dark one', from ciar 'dark'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Ciaran have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.3 thousand people named Ciaran in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ciaran.
- Is Ciaran a male or female name?
- Ciaran is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Ciaran?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,229 people named Ciaran in 2020, about 1 in 149 thousand residents.
- How common is Ciaran compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Ciaran is the 808th most common given name of 404,737 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ciaran?
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/ciaranThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Ciaran” — the 808th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.