Colleen
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Colleen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 4th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From the word colleen, from Irish cailín (“girl”), not used as a name in Ireland.
- AGAntigua & Barbuda≈1 in 648(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 1.5K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.5K
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)
- #772 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 558 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 648 (inferred from the name graph)
≈660,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Antigua & Barbuda, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the word colleen, from Irish cailín (“girl”), not used as a name in Ireland. Colleen can also be interpreted as a variant of Coleen, which was a product of marketing by the Hollywood film industry (to promote a new starlet in the 1920s).
Sources 2
- A concise dictionary of first names
- Wiktionary
Where in the world(measured from records)
Colleen 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 | — | ≈660,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Colleen | 34 |
| US United States | #308 | 137,514 | 1 in 2.4K | 137K | Colleen | 558 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | #511 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Colleen | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | #384 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 4 | Colleen | 227 |
| CA Canada | #249 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 1 | Colleen | 281 |
| IE Ireland | #197 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Colleen | 78 |
| NZ New Zealand | #236 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 12 | Colleen | 117 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #4 | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 648 | — | Colleen | 3 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Colleen is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Mainly U.S. and Australian: from the Anglo-Irish vocabulary word colleen girl, wench (Gaelic cailín ). The name arose during the period of enthusiasm for Irish names in the 1940s and became especially popular in America, although it is not in fact used as a given name in Ireland. It is sometimes taken as a feminine of COLIN .
as a word
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)
- Colleen Dewhurstb. 1924CACanadian-American actress (1924-1991)
- Colleen McCulloughb. 1937AUAustralian author (1937-2015)
- Colleen Atwoodb. 1948USAmerican costume designer
- Cassandra Harrisb. 1948AUnot in their usual nameAustralian actress (1948–1991)
- Kate Nelliganb. 1950CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actress
- Colleen Campb. 1953USAmerican actress and film producer
- Vitamin Cb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer and actress
- Colleen Hooverb. 1979USAmerican author
- Colleen Ballingerb. 1986USAmerican comedian, singer, actress, writer and media personality
- CoCo Vandewegheb. 1991USnot in their usual nameAmerican tennis player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 54 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 121 | #129,619 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Colleen mean, and where does it come from?
- From the word colleen, from Irish cailín (“girl”), not used as a name in Ireland. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Wiktionary.
- What are other forms of the name Colleen?
- In the etymology graph, Coleen, Colene and Kolleen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Colleen a male or female name?
- Colleen is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Colleen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 664 thousand people named Colleen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled colleen.
- How common is the name Colleen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 137,514 people named Colleen in 2020, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Colleen compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Colleen is the 4th most common given name of 3,327 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Colleen?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/colleenThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Colleen” — the 4th most common given name in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.