Kelly
given name · Latin script
Meaning: (i) also Kelley from Irish Gaelic O Ceallaigh, ‘descendant of Ceallach’, a nickname meaning ‘bright-headed’; (ii) from places named Kelly in Scotland or Devon, from Gaelic coille ‘wood, grove’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɛli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kelly is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 42nd most common given name.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 461(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 468
- CNChina≈1 in 468
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)
- #168 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 671 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 461 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,000,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kelley in CN China.
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)
- Irish GaelicO(measured from records)
- Gaeliccoille(measured from records)
(i) also Kelley from Irish Gaelic O Ceallaigh, ‘descendant of Ceallach’, a nickname meaning ‘bright-headed’; (ii) from places named Kelly in Scotland or Devon, from Gaelic coille ‘wood, grove’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kelly 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 | — | ≈3,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 468 | — | Kelley | 96 |
| US United States | #68 | 499,222 | 1 in 666 | 438K | Kelly | 671 |
| GB United Kingdom | #81 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 468 | 81 | Kelly | 361 |
| BR Brazil | — | 118,991 | 1 in 1.8K | 119K | — | 9 |
| CA Canada | #61 | ≈76,000 est. | ≈1 in 497 | 16 | Kelly | 349 |
| AU Australia | #58 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 495 | 104 | Kelly | 321 |
| IE Ireland | #54 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 472 | 4 | Kelly | 198 |
| NZ New Zealand | #69 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 461 | 15 | Kelly | 176 |
| SG Singapore | #42 | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 627 | — | Kelly | 139 |
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); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–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)
Kelly is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, for O'Kelly, Irish Ó Ceallaigh 'descendant of Ceallach' ('war'); also MacKelly, or local from Kelly near Arbroath, Kellie in Fife, or Kelly (Devon) from Cornish celli 'wood, grove'; first attested McKelly 1429
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Irish surname now used as a feminine and masculine first name; meaning uncertain.
as a nameIrish first names
In French, From Irish surname Ó Ceallaigh, meaning 'descendant of Ceallach'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, From Irish surname Ó Ceallaigh; 'warrior'.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Ceallaigh ‘descendant of Ceallach', an ancient Irish personal name, originally a byname meaning ‘bright-headed’, later understood as ‘frequenting churches’ (Irish ceall). There are several early Irish saints who bore this name. Kelly is now the most common of all Irish family names in Ireland.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Kelly Bishopb. 1944USAmerican actress
- Kelly McGillisb. 1957USAmerican actress
- Kelly Prestonb. 1962USAmerican actress (1962–2020)
- Kelly Hub. 1968USAmerican actress
- Kelly Holmesb. 1970GBBritish middle distance athlete and Olympic gold medallist
- Kelly Macdonaldb. 1976GBScottish actress
- Kelly Reillyb. 1977GBBritish actress
- Kelly Brookb. 1979GBBritish actress and model
- Jennifer Tisdaleb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Kelly Rohrbachb. 1990USAmerican actress, model, and professional golfer
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 126 sources across 62 countries.
Reference works 10
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Kelly mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) also Kelley from Irish Gaelic O Ceallaigh, ‘descendant of Ceallach’, a nickname meaning ‘bright-headed’; (ii) from places named Kelly in Scotland or Devon, from Gaelic coille ‘wood, grove’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Kelly a male or female name?
- Kelly is a female 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.
- What are other forms of the name Kelly?
- In the etymology graph, Kelli, Kellie and Kelleigh are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Kelly have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.0 million people named Kelly in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kelley.
- How common is the name Kelly?
- In the United States, the national register counted 499,222 people named Kelly in 2020, about 1 in 666 residents.
- How common is Kelly compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Kelly is the 42nd most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Kelly?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛli/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Kelly?
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/kellyThe 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, “Kelly” — the 42nd most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.