Clough

surname · Latin script

Meaning: dweller in a ravine or steep-sided valley; from OE *clōh; first attested Alan Bouenthecloue 1261 AssLa (A Dictionary of English Surnames)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/klaʊ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Clough is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 9,339 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Clough is also written קלאף in Hebrew.

  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 13Kfew records
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 14K

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 Clough itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

9,339 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
378 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Clough in other scripts: Hebrew

(measured from records)
CloughLatin(measured from records)
קלאףClough in Hebrew(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.

How to pronounce Clough

  • English:/klaʊ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

dweller in a ravine or steep-sided valley; from OE *clōh; first attested Alan Bouenthecloue 1261 AssLa

Cited for this meaning 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Clough is found

(measured from records)

Clough 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 Clough is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—9,3391 in 36K9.3KClough378
GB United Kingdom—≈6,200 est.≈1 in 11KlistedClough208
AU Australia—≈1,900 est.≈1 in 14K—Clough133
CA Canada—≈1,300 est.≈1 in 32K—Clough108
ZA South Africa—≈460 est.≈1 in 141K—Clough22
NZ New Zealand—≈410 est.≈1 in 13K—Clough63
IE Ireland—≈240 est.≈1 in 23K—Clough12
JM Jamaica#938≈190 est.≈1 in 15K—Clough6

9,339 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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).

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Clough 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, near a precipitous slope, from OE cloh ravine. Vars.: Cleugh, Cluff; Cloke (Devon); Clow, Clew, Clue; Clowes, Clew(e)s (W Midlands; from the gen. case).

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • In English, A narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Person who lives near a steep slope.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In English, /. Arthur Hugh, English poet

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In enm, A narrow valley; a ravine.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)
1920194019601980Brian Clough, b. 1935G. Wayne Clough, b. 1941Nigel Clough, b. 1966
  • Brian Cloughb. 1935GBEnglish football player and manager (1935–2004)
  • G. Wayne Cloughb. 1941USPresident Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology and 12th Secretary of the Smithsonian (born 1941)
  • Nigel Cloughb. 1966GBEnglish association football player and manager (born 1966)

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 Clough,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

20 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Clough mean, and where does it come from?
dweller in a ravine or steep-sided valley; from OE *clōh; first attested Alan Bouenthecloue 1261 AssLa Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How do you pronounce Clough?
In English /klaʊ/ (Wiktionary).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Clough?
In the United States, the national register counted about 9.3 thousand people named Clough, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled clough. After it come United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Clough?
In the United States, the national register counted 9,339 people named Clough in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
How common is Clough compared with other names?
In Jamaica, Clough is the 938th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Clough?

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

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, “Clough” — ranked 3616th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Clough parses inside a full name →