Murray
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 42 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
/ˈmɝi/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Murray 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 15th most common surname.
- IEIreland≈1 in 610(inferred from the name graph)
- GDGrenada1 in 658
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 658
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 Murray 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)
- #431 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 595 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 607 (inferred from the name graph)
184,910 people, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
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)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)From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Murray, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Murray 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 | #108 | 184,910 | 1 in 1.8K | 185K | Murray | 595 |
| GB United Kingdom | #61 | ≈68,000 est. | ≈1 in 972 | 58 | Murray | 340 |
| CA Canada | #62 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 1 | Murray | 273 |
| AU Australia | #61 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 972 | 86 | Murray | 286 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Murray | 20 |
| IE Ireland | #15 | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 607 | — | Murray | 164 |
| GY Guyana | — | 956 | 1 in 785 | 956 | — | 8 |
| GD Grenada | — | 172 | 1 in 658 | 172 | — | 5 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 154 | 1 in 658 | 154 | — | 7 |
184,910 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; 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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 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)Murray 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 the province/earldom of Moray, Old Gaelic mori ‘sea home’; William de Moravia recorded from 1203.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, from the province of Moray, Scotland; first attested William de Moravia 1203 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Muireadhaigh ‘descendant of Muireadhach’ (the name of several different families in various parts of Ireland), or a shortened form of McMurRAY.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
regional name from Moray in northeastern Scotland, which is probably named with Old Celtic elements meaning ‘sea’ -f ‘settlement’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Transferred use of the Scottish surname, in origin a local name from the region now called Moray. Variant: Moray.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)- Grace Hopperb. 1906USnot in their usual nameAmerican computer scientist and United States Navy officer (1906–1992)
- Joseph Murrayb. 1919USUS surgeon (1919–2012)
- Bill Murrayb. 1950USAmerican actor and comedian
- Patty Murrayb. 1950USUnited States Senator from Washington since 2013
- Dave Murrayb. 1956GBEnglish guitarist
- Joel Murrayb. 1963USAmerican actor
- Joanne K. Rowlingb. 1965GBnot in their usual nameEnglish author (born 1965)
- Chad Michael Murrayb. 1981USAmerican actor
- Andy Murrayb. 1987GBBritish tennis player (born 1987)
- Hannah Murrayb. 1989GBEnglish actress
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)79 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 185K | #136 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 179K | #139 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 178K | #123 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 956 | #97 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 172 | #85 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 154 | #120 |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Murray mean, and where does it come from?
- From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Murray have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 185 thousand people named Murray, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled murray.
- How do you pronounce Murray?
- In English /ˈmɝi/ (Wiktionary).
- How common is the name Murray?
- In the United States, the national register counted 184,910 people named Murray in 2010, about 1 in 1.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Murray compared with other names?
- In the United States, Murray is the 108th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Murray?
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/murrayThe 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, “Murray” — the 108th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.