MacGillivray
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hebridean occupational name from Gaelic Mac Gille-Bhrath, “son of the servant of judgement”; Archibald Makillewray recorded 1535
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
MacGillivray is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 6.3M(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 255Kas McGillivray
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.2Mas McGillivray
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than MacGillivray itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 7 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.3M (inferred from the name graph)
1,302 named McGillivray, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Spain
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)Hebridean occupational name from Gaelic Mac Gille-Bhrath, “son of the servant of judgement”; Archibald Makillewray recorded 1535.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where in the world
(measured from records)MacGillivray 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,302as McGillivray | 1 in 255K | 1.3K | MacGillivray | 7 |
| ES Spain | 8 | 1 in 6.3M | 8 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 7as McGillivray | 1 in 1.2M | 7 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 1as McGillivray | 1 in 12M | 1 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | — | — | MacGillivray | 5 |
1,302 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling mcgillivray. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)MacGillivray is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Gaelic: 'son of the servant of judgment'; first attested Archibald Mclluray 1542
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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)- William MacGillivrayb. 1796GBBritish naturalist and ornithologist (1796–1852)
- John MacGillivrayb. 1821AUBritish botanist (1821-1867)
- Ivor MacGillivrayb. 1840AUAustralian politician
- Donald MacGillivrayb. 1906GBScottish colonial administrator (1906–1966)
- W. Don MacGillivrayb. 1919USAmerican politician (1919-1994)
- Greg MacGillivrayb. 1945USAmerican documentary film director and cinematographer
- William D. MacGillivrayb. 1946CACanadian film director and screenwriter
- J. A. MacGillivrayb. 1953CACanadian archaeologist
- Craig MacGillivrayb. 1972GBScottish snooker player
- Craig MacGillivrayb. 1993GBassociation football 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)10 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 926 | #27,561 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 880 | #27,411 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 805 | #28,028 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #166,608 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 MacGillivray mean, and where does it come from?
- Hebridean occupational name from Gaelic Mac Gille-Bhrath, “son of the servant of judgement”; Archibald Makillewray recorded 1535. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- In which country does MacGillivray have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.3 thousand people named McGillivray, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is MacGillivray most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, MacGillivray is densest in Spain — about 1 in 6.3 million people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name MacGillivray?
- In Spain, the national register counted 8 people named MacGillivray, about 1 in 6.3 million residents.
What do you want to know about MacGillivray?
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/macgillivrayThe 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, “MacGillivray”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.