Cawley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably for COWLEY; in Scotland for MACAULEY; first attested Thomas Cauly 1330 IpmNt
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɔɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cawley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 8K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 23K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 44K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 356 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
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)
probably for COWLEY; in Scotland for MACAULEY; first attested Thomas Cauly 1330 IpmNt
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cawley 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 92K | — | Cawley | 4 |
| US United States | — | 5,451 | 1 in 61K | 5.5K | Cawley | 356 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Cawley | 174 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Cawley | 76 |
| IE Ireland | #574 | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Cawley | 86 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Cawley | 91 |
| JM Jamaica | — | ≈88 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Cawley | 7 |
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. 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)
Cawley 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.
In English, a reduced form of MacAulay
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Evonne Goolagong, Australian
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, tennis player
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)
- Frederick Cawley, 1st Baron Cawleyb. 1850GBBritish politician (1850-1937)
- Oswald Cawleyb. 1882GBBritish politician (1882-1918)
- Shirley Cawleyb. 1932GBBritish athlete
- Rex Cawleyb. 1940USAmerican hurdler (1940–2022)
- Gaynor Cawleyb. 1941USAmerican politician
- Peter Cawleyb. 1965GBEnglish footballer (born 1965)
- James Cawleyb. 1967USAmerican actor
- Mike Cawleyb. 1972USAmerican football player
- David Cawleyb. 1991IEIrish association football player
- Tucker Cawleyb. 2000USAmerican television producer and writer
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 18 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.5K | #6,268 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.4K | #5,900 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.1K | #6,358 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Cawley mean, and where does it come from?
- probably for COWLEY; in Scotland for MACAULEY; first attested Thomas Cauly 1330 IpmNt Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Cawley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɔɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Cawley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Cawley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cawley.
- How common is the name Cawley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,451 people named Cawley in 2010, about 1 in 61 thousand residents.
- How common is Cawley compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Cawley is the 574th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cawley?
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/cawleyThe 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, “Cawley” — the 574th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.