Colley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from OE *colig ‘coaly, coal-black’; first attested Hugh Coly 1212 Cur (Y)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Colley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 19K
- CACanada≈1 in 34K
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)
- Sources
- 377 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
8,887 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from OE *colig ‘coaly, coal-black’; first attested Hugh Coly 1212 Cur (Y)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Colley 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 | 8,887 | 1 in 37K | 8.9K | Colley | 377 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | Colley | 208 |
| GH Ghana | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Colley | 13 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Colley | 134 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Colley | 101 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Colley | 32 |
| IE Ireland | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Colley | 39 |
8,887 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. 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)
Colley is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Dated form of collie (“dog breed”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, pers. name (C. Gibber)
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, As an indigenous Irish surname (MacColley) it belongs to Cos. Roscommon and Galway. This may be Mac Colla, but it has been suggested that Colley is here a variant of Cooley. The main English family came to Ireland temp. Henry VIII; later they acquired the Wellesley property and name. MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In French, collie (group of dog breeds)
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)
- Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesleyb. 1760GBnot in their usual nameBritish politician (1760-1842)
- George Pomeroy Colleyb. 1835IEBritish Army general (1835–1881)
- Minnie Pearlb. 1912USnot in their usual nameAmerican comedian and country singer (1912–1996)
- Kenneth Colleyb. 1937GBBritish actor (1937–2025)
- Linda Colleyb. 1949GBBritish historian
- Scott Colleyb. 1963USAmerican jazz bassist and composer
- Samantha Colleyb. 1989GBBritish actress
- Omar Colleyb. 1992GMGambian footballer
- Ebrima Colleyb. 2000GMGambian association football player
- Joshua Colleyb. 2002USAmerican actor (2002-)
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 31 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.9K | #3,996 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.7K | #3,742 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.4K | #4,106 |
| US United States | wru 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 Colley mean, and where does it come from?
- from OE *colig ‘coaly, coal-black’; first attested Hugh Coly 1212 Cur (Y) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Colley have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.9 thousand people named Colley, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled colley.
- How common is the name Colley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,887 people named Colley in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Colley?
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/colleyThe 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, “Colley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.