Carey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) different form of Carew; (ii) ‘person from Cary’, Devon and Somerset (‘pleasant stream’); (iii) ‘person from Carrey’, Normandy; (iv) from Irish Gaelic O Ciardha, ‘descendant of Ciardha’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kɛəɹi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Carey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.8K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.9K
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)
- Sources
- 524 (measured from records)
- 1 in 414 (inferred from the name graph)
56,322 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) different form of Carew; (ii) ‘person from Cary’, Devon and Somerset (‘pleasant stream’); (iii) ‘person from Carrey’, Normandy; (iv) from Irish Gaelic O Ciardha, ‘descendant of Ciardha’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Carey 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 | #476 | 56,322 | 1 in 5.9K | 56K | Carey | 524 |
| GB United Kingdom | #373 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 3 | Carey | 253 |
| CA Canada | #515 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 1 | Carey | 199 |
| AU Australia | #354 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | 3 | Carey | 208 |
| IT Italy | #969 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Carey | 32 |
| IE Ireland | #142 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Carey | 130 |
| JM Jamaica | #128 | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Carey | 9 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | — | 130 | 1 in 414 | 130 | — | 6 |
56,322 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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)
Carey 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 French, From a Gaelic surname, originally from place names meaning 'fort' or 'castle'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Irish Gaelic; friend. Also from the river (Cornish); loved one
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Variant spelling of Cary, used mainly as a girl’s name, under the influence of Carrie.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A placename:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, literally ‘dark one’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- William Careyb. 1761GBEnglish Baptist missionary and Particular Baptist minister (1761-1834)
- Harry Careyb. 1878USAmerican actor (1878–1947)
- Macdonald Careyb. 1913USAmerican actor (1913–1994)
- Harry Carey Jr.b. 1921USAmerican actor (1921–2012)
- Philip Careyb. 1925USUnited States Marine and actor (1925-2009)
- Timothy Careyb. 1929USAmerican actor (1929-1994)
- Peter Careyb. 1943AUAustralian novelist (born 1943)
- Drew Careyb. 1958USAmerican comedian (born 1958)
- Mary Careyb. 1980USAmerican pornographic actress
- Emily Careyb. 2003GBBritish actor
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 55 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 56K | #601 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 55K | #547 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 54K | #614 |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026 | 2026 | 130 | #76 |
Reference works 4
- 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 does the name Carey mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) different form of Carew; (ii) ‘person from Cary’, Devon and Somerset (‘pleasant stream’); (iii) ‘person from Carrey’, Normandy; (iv) from Irish Gaelic O Ciardha, ‘descendant of Ciardha’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Carey?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛəɹi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Carey have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 56 thousand people named Carey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled carey.
- Where is Carey most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Carey is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 414 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Carey?
- In the United States, the national register counted 56,322 people named Carey in 2010, about 1 in 5.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Carey compared with other names?
- In the United States, Carey is the 476th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Carey?
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/careyThe 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, “Carey” — the 476th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.