Kingsley
given name · Latin script
Meaning: person from Kingsley, various English places; 'king's glade'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kingsley is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 95th most common given name.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 596(inferred from the name graph)
- GHGhana≈1 in 2.1K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 16K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 395 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 596 (inferred from the name graph)
≈360,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Kingsley, various English places; 'king's glade'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kingsley 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #95 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 596 | — | Kingsley | 151 |
| CN China | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Kingsley | 31 |
| GH Ghana | #63 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Kingsley | 97 |
| US United States | — | 6,673 | 1 in 50K | 8K | Kingsley | 395 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kingsley | 52 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Kingsley | 35 |
| GY Guyana | — | 38 | 1 in 20K | 38 | — | 3 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Kingsley 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, from Kingsley (Cheshire, Hampshire, Staffordshire); first attested William de Kingesle 1246 AssLa
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, in Ches., Hants, and Staffs., so called from from OE cyningesleah ‘wood, clearing of the King, chieftain’. Vars.: Kincey, Kynsey, Kinzie.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, habitational name from any of the places so called, in Cheshire, Hampshire, and Staffordshire. These are all named in Old English as cyningesleah ‘the woodland clearing (Old English leak) of the king (cyning)'.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Charles, English clergyman, novelist
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Ben, British actor
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Kinsley S. Binghamb. 1808USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (1808-1861)
- Kingsley Woodb. 1881GBBritish politician (1881-1943)
- Gladwyn Kingsley Nobleb. 1894USU.S. zoologist and herpetologist (1894–1940)
- Kingsley A. Taftb. 1903USAmerican politician (1903-1970)
- Kingsley Amisb. 1922GBEnglish novelist, poet, critic and teacher (1922-1995)
- Joe Ortonb. 1933GBnot in their usual nameEnglish playwright (1933–1967)
- Scott Swiftb. 1952USnot in their usual namefather of Taylor Swift
- Austin Swiftb. 1992USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Kingsley Ehizibueb. 1995NLDutch association football player
- Kingsley Comanb. 1996FRFrench footballer (born 1996)
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 71 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5.6K | #3,223 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #3,223 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 196 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 119 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 38 | #556 |
Reference works 6
- 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
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Kingsley mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Kingsley, various English places; 'king's glade' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Kingsley a male or female name?
- Kingsley 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 Kingsley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,673 people named Kingsley in 2020, about 1 in 50 thousand residents.
- How common is Kingsley compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Kingsley is the 95th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Kingsley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 359 thousand people named Kingsley in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kingsley.
What do you want to know about Kingsley?
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/kingsleyThe 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, “Kingsley” — the 95th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.