Moran
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) Irish Gaelic Ó Moráin, from a personal name meaning ‘large’; (ii) different form of Morant
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məɹæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Moran is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 881as Maureen(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.3Kas Maureen
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.5Kas Maureen
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Moran itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #694 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 548 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 881 (inferred from the name graph)
125,608 named Maureen, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est., as Maureen
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Maureen in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 more.
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)
(i) Irish Gaelic Ó Moráin, from a personal name meaning ‘large’; (ii) different form of Morant.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Moran is read(measured from records)
Moran is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English46%
(i) Irish Gaelic Ó Moráin, from a personal name meaning ‘large’; (ii) different form of Morant.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A surname from Old French of Old French origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish42%
third-person plural present indicative of morar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Moran 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 | #309 | 125,608as Maureen | 1 in 2.6K | 126K | Maureen | 548 |
| NG Nigeria | #564 | ≈94,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Maureen | 93 |
| GB United Kingdom | #172 | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 881 | 3 | Maureen | 268 |
| ZA South Africa | #225 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Maureen | 90 |
| PH Philippines | #707 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Maureen | 133 |
| AU Australia | #282 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 94 | Maureen | 205 |
| IE Ireland | #162 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Moran | 143 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 4,014as Maureen | 1 in 1.3K | 4K | — | 31 |
| NZ New Zealand | #218 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 12 | Maureen | 113 |
125,608 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Moran 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Morain ‘descendant of M6rdn\ a personal name meaning ‘great’, ‘large’; the stress is normally on the first syllable.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name from places called Moran in Asturies, Galicia (Pontevedra) and Aragon (Zaragoza).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
variant of Morant, normally pronounced with the stress on the second syllable.
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)
- Thomas Moranb. 1837USAmerican artist (1837-1926)
- Polly Moranb. 1883USActress, vaudevillian (1883-1952)
- Bugs Moranb. 1893USChicago gangster (1893–1957)
- Dolores Moranb. 1926USAmerican actress (1926-1982)
- Pauline Moranb. 1947GBBritish actress
- Jerry Moranb. 1954USUnited States Senator from Kansas
- Nick Moranb. 1969GBBritish actor, writer, producer and director
- Dylan Moranb. 1971IEIrish actor and comedian
- Caitlin Moranb. 1975GBEnglish author and broadcaster
- Jason Moranb. 1975USAmerican jazz pianist, composer, educator (born 1975)
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)
Attested in 65 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 89K | #353 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 86K | #358 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 79K | #362 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 728 | #534 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 327 | #21,118 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 157 | #21,118 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1995 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1928 | 5 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
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 Moran mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Irish Gaelic Ó Moráin, from a personal name meaning ‘large’; (ii) different form of Morant. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Moran have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 126 thousand people named Maureen, more than in any other country we hold.
- How do you pronounce Moran?
- A machine transcription gives /məɹæn/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Moran?
- In the etymology graph, Morani is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Moran?
- In the United States, the national register counted 125,608 people named Maureen in 2020, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Moran compared with other names?
- In the United States, Moran is the 309th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Moran?
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/moranThe 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, “Moran” — the 309th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.