Quinn

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Cuinn, ‘descendant of Conn’, a nickname meaning ‘leader, chief’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/kwɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Quinn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 30th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 805(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.1K
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 2.2K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈370,000 people, est.

#999 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

Sources
545 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 805 (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from Irish Gaelic Ó Cuinn, ‘descendant of Conn’, a nickname meaning ‘leader, chief’.

Sources 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 Quinn, 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)

Quinn 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.

Where Quinn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈370,000 est.≈1 in 3.7K—Quinn31
US United States#31976,9861 in 4.3K77KQuinn545
GB United Kingdom#177≈32,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K37Quinn280
AU Australia#205≈11,000 est.≈1 in 2.2K119Quinn232
CA Canada#288≈11,000 est.≈1 in 3.5K46Quinn237
IE Ireland#30≈6,400 est.≈1 in 805—Quinn155
NZ New Zealand#238≈1,800 est.≈1 in 2.8K44Quinn113
IS Iceland—≈180 est.≈1 in 2K1—1

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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Quinn is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Quínn

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, United Kingdom

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Qúïnn

  • Portuguese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Portugal

    Also written Quïnn, Qüïnn

76 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Quinn 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, Irish surname meaning ‘counsel’; sometimes used as a Christian name.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In English, O Cuinn ‘intelligent’; sept in Antrim, Longford and Clare

    as a nameIrish family names

  • In English, Irish surname/name, from Ó Cuinn; 'descendant of Conn'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Transferred use of the Irish surname, Gaelic O Cuinn ‘descendant of Conn’. The latter is from a word meaning ‘leader’ or ‘chief’. It may also sometimes be used as a short form of Quincy or Quintin.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • ant of Conn’, a byname meaning ‘Leader’, ‘Chief. Quiddihy see Cody Vars.: (O’)Quin(e), O’Quyn.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

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)

190019502000Anthony Quinn, b. 1915Declan Quinn, b. 1957Aidan Quinn, b. 1959Francesco Quinn, b. 1963Lorenzo Quinn, b. 1966Aileen Quinn, b. 1971Molly Quinn, b. 1993Joseph Quinn, b. 1994Abby Quinn, b. 1996Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, b. 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).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Quinn,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 78 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Quinn
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201077K#422
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202075K#429
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200075K#386

Reference works 5

  • 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 are other forms of the name Quinn?
In the etymology graph, Quin is a form of the same name in other languages.
What does the name Quinn mean, and where does it come from?
from Irish Gaelic Ó Cuinn, ‘descendant of Conn’, a nickname meaning ‘leader, chief’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Quinn have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 374 thousand people named Quinn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled quinn.
How do you pronounce Quinn?
A machine transcription gives /kwɪn/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Quinn?
In the United States, the national register counted 76,986 people named Quinn in 2010, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
How common is Quinn compared with other names?
In Ireland, Quinn is the 30th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Quinn?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/quinn

The 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, “Quinn” — the 30th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Quinn parses inside a full name →