Cahal
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kæhəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cahal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Recorded meaning: An anglicised spelling of Cathal. Cahir [Cathaoir] (m) ‘warrior’. Aname which was once popular in Leinster. Cathair was a variant found in a number of families.
- USUnited States1 in 2M(measured from records)
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 624K
- ILIsrael≈1 in 995K
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.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 105 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 624K (inferred from the name graph)
≈900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
An anglicised spelling of Cathal. Cahir [Cathaoir] (m) ‘warrior’. Aname which was once popular in Leinster. Cathair was a variant found in a number of families. The name is still used in Ireland today. Cain [Cain] (m) Hebrew, ‘smith’. This name was used to anglicise Cian, though why the name of such an unedifying Biblical character should have been chosen is something of a mystery. The use of this name is not confined to Ireland. Dunkling notes that he has traced six bearers of it.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cahal 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | 7 | Cahal | 5 |
| US United States | 166 | 1 in 2M | 166 | Cahal | 105 |
| PH Philippines | ≈72 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | — | Cahal | 4 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 3.7M | 3 | Cahal | 62 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 624K | listed | — | 1 |
| IL Israel | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 995K | — | Cahal | 6 |
| SG Singapore | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | — | Cahal | 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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); the in-instate-surnames-bystate 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Terry H. Cahalb. 1802USAmerican politician
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 166 | #107,134 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 154 | #107,038 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 140 | #127,742 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #1,143 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Cahal mean, and where does it come from?
- An anglicised spelling of Cathal. Cahir [Cathaoir] (m) ‘warrior’. Aname which was once popular in Leinster. Cathair was a variant found in a number of families. Recorded by Irish first names.
- How do you pronounce Cahal?
- A machine transcription gives /kæhəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Cahal have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 903 people named Cahal in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cahal.
- How common is the name Cahal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 166 people named Cahal in 2010, about 1 in 2.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Cahal?
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/cahalThe 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, “Cahal”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.