Clough
surname · Latin script
Meaning: dweller in a ravine or steep-sided valley; from OE *clōh; first attested Alan Bouenthecloue 1261 AssLa
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/klʌf/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Clough is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 15K
- CACanada≈1 in 35K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 378 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
9,339 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, 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)
dweller in a ravine or steep-sided valley; from OE *clōh; first attested Alan Bouenthecloue 1261 AssLa
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 9,339 | 1 in 36K | 9.3K | Clough | 378 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | listed | Clough | 208 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Clough | 133 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 217K | — | Clough | 9 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Clough | 108 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Clough | 63 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Clough | 12 |
| JM Jamaica | #938 | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Clough | 6 |
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)
- Arthur Hugh Cloughb. 1819GBEnglish poet (1819–1861)
- Anne Cloughb. 1820GBEnglish suffragist and educator (1820–1892)
- Beatrice Wrightb. 1910GBnot in their usual nameAmerican-born British politician (1910-2003)
- 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)
- Chris Cloughb. 1951GBBritish television director and producer
- Charles Cloughb. 1951USAmerican painter (born 1951)
- Nigel Cloughb. 1966GBEnglish association football player and manager (born 1966)
- Charlie Cloughb. 1990GBBritish footballer
- Zach Cloughb. 1995GBEnglish association football player (born 1995)
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 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.3K | #3,789 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9K | #3,616 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.9K | #3,885 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 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?
- A machine transcription gives /klʌf/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Clough have the most bearers?
- 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.
- 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?
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/cloughThe 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” — the 938th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.