Cochrane

surname · Latin script

Meaning: From a Renfrewshire place-name, likely Brittonic coch rhen 'red stream'; recorded as Waldeve de Coueran in 1262 and Robertus de Cochrane in 1360

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ˈkɑkɹən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Cochrane is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 7.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 7.5K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 10K

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)

≈57,000 people, est.

Sources
390 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.5K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

From a Renfrewshire place-name, likely Brittonic coch rhen 'red stream'; recorded as Waldeve de Coueran in 1262 and Robertus de Cochrane in 1360.

Sources 1

  • Scottish Surnames

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cochrane 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 Cochrane is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈57,000 est.≈1 in 24K—Cochrane6
US United States—8,3551 in 40K8.4KCochrane390
GB United Kingdom#934≈6,400 est.≈1 in 10KlistedCochrane209
CA Canada—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 11K—Cochrane190
AU Australia#717≈3,400 est.≈1 in 7.5K—Cochrane159
NZ New Zealand#544≈660 est.≈1 in 7.5K—Cochrane108
DM Dominica—71 in 11K7——

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 scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register; Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cochrane is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Cóchrane

59 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cochrane is also recorded in 2 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 Scottish habitational surname.

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

  • In Irish, A Scottish toponymic numerous in Ulster. It is occasionally used as a variant of Cuggeran and Corcoran

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

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)

1700180019002000Alexander Cochrane, b. 1758Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, b. 1775Josephine Cochrane, b. 1839Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, b. 1860Archie Cochrane, b. 1909Michael Cochrane, b. 1947John H. Cochrane, b. 1957Rory Cochrane, b. 1972Ryan Cochrane, b. 1988Annalisa Cochrane, b. 1996

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 Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 35 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Cochrane
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020108.4K#4,246
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.2K#3,961
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208K#4,305
DM DominicaDominica — Revised List of Electors May 202520257#220
GB United KingdomScottish Surnames (Ross, 1994)———
US United Stateswru 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 Cochrane mean, and where does it come from?
From a Renfrewshire place-name, likely Brittonic coch rhen 'red stream'; recorded as Waldeve de Coueran in 1262 and Robertus de Cochrane in 1360. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
How do you pronounce Cochrane?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑkɹən/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Cochrane have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 57 thousand people named Cochrane in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cochrane.
How common is the name Cochrane?
In the United States, the national register counted 8,355 people named Cochrane in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
How common is Cochrane compared with other names?
In New Zealand, Cochrane is the 544th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cochrane?

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

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, “Cochrane” — the 544th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cochrane parses inside a full name →