McLaughlin
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lochlainn ‘son of the Scandinavian’, a patronymic from the personal name Lochlann (see Laughlin)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/məˈɡɫɑkɫən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McLaughlin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 54th most common surname.
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.8K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 2.8K
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 States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 529 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
74,816 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
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)Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lochlainn ‘son of the Scandinavian’, a patronymic from the personal name Lochlann (see Laughlin).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)McLaughlin 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 | #326 | 74,816 | 1 in 4.4K | 75K | McLaughlin | 529 |
| GB United Kingdom | #192 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | McLaughlin | 266 |
| CA Canada | #243 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | McLaughlin | 224 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | McLaughlin | 9 |
| IT Italy | #561 | ≈8,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | McLaughlin | 22 |
| IE Ireland | #54 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | McLaughlin | 126 |
| JM Jamaica | #102 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | McLaughlin | 18 |
| IS Iceland | #652 | ≈86 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | listed | McLaughlin | 7 |
74,816 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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. 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)McLaughlin is also recorded in 2 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 Gaelic, ‘son of Lochlann’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, John, English musician
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)- Willard Mackb. 1873USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, film director (1873-1934)
- Ann McLaughlin Korologosb. 1941USAmerican politician (1941–2023)
- John McLaughlinb. 1942GBEnglish guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra
- Lulub. 1948GBnot in their usual nameScottish singer
- Jake McLaughlinb. 1982USAmerican actor
- Lelandb. 1991USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer
- Bishop Briggsb. 1992GBnot in their usual nameEnglish singer and songwriter
- Elizabeth McLaughlinb. 1993USAmerican actress
- Sydney McLaughlinb. 1999USAmerican hurdler and sprinter
- Caleb McLaughlinb. 2001USAmerican actor (born 2001)
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)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 75K | #437 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 73K | #392 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 72K | #446 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 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 McLaughlin mean, and where does it come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lochlainn ‘son of the Scandinavian’, a patronymic from the personal name Lochlann (see Laughlin). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce McLaughlin?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈɡɫɑkɫən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McLaughlin have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 75 thousand people named McLaughlin, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mclaughlin.
- How common is the name McLaughlin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 74,816 people named McLaughlin in 2010, about 1 in 4.4 thousand residents.
- How common is McLaughlin compared with other names?
- In the United States, McLaughlin is the 326th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McLaughlin?
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/mclaughlinThe 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, “McLaughlin” — the 326th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.