Coley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for a dark-haired or dark-complexioned person; or perhaps from Coaley, Gloucestershire
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkoʊɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Coley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 18K
- USUnited States1 in 21K
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 418 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈23,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for a dark-haired or dark-complexioned person; or perhaps from Coaley, Gloucestershire.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Coley 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Coley | 2 |
| US United States | — | 15,671 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Coley | 418 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | listed | Coley | 178 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Coley | 96 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 46K | 1 | — | 1 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Coley | 8 |
| JM Jamaica | #255 | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Coley | 12 |
| NZ New Zealand | #482 | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Coley | 56 |
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; the co-datosgov-candidates 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)
Coley 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, son, from OE colig dark, black (a deriv. of col (char)coal; cf.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, coalfish, Pollachius virens
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)
- Henry Coleyb. 1633GBEnglish astrologer and mathematician
- William Coleyb. 1862USAmerican surgeon (1862-1936)
- Thomas Coleyb. 1913USStage Manager, Performer, Writer ( b. Jun 29, 1913 Bethayres, Pennsylvania, USA - d. May 23, 1989 Tyringham, Massachusetts, USA ) Male
- Doris Coleyb. 1941USAmerican singer (1941–2000)
- Jim Coleyb. 1951USAmerican politician
- Daryl Coleyb. 1955USAmerican musician (1955-2016)
- Bill Coleyb. 1960USAmerican politician
- Marti Coleyb. 1961USFlorida State Representative
- Kevis Coleyb. 1982USAmerican football player
- Stacy Coleyb. 1994USAmerican football player (born 1994)
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 27 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,326 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,340 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,243 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 1 | #115 |
| 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
- 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 Coley mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for a dark-haired or dark-complexioned person; or perhaps from Coaley, Gloucestershire. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Coley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkoʊɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Coley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 23 thousand people named Coley in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled coley.
- How common is the name Coley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,671 people named Coley in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Coley compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Coley is the 255th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Coley?
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/coleyThe 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, “Coley” — the 255th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.