Cooney
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Irish Gaelic O Cuana, ‘descendant of Cuana’, probably from cuanna ‘elegant’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkuni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cooney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 12K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K
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
- 401 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.6K (inferred from the name graph)
12,455 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Irish Gaelic O Cuana, ‘descendant of Cuana’, probably from cuanna ‘elegant’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cooney 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 | — | 12,455 | 1 in 27K | 12K | Cooney | 401 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | Cooney | 195 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Cooney | 4 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Cooney | 158 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Cooney | 144 |
| IE Ireland | #270 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Cooney | 115 |
| NZ New Zealand | #953 | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Cooney | 74 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈35 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Cooney | 4 |
12,455 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)
Cooney is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, O Cuanaic, 'handsome'/'elegant'; sept of Galway, Clare and West Cork
as a nameIrish family names
cendant of Cuana’, a personal name derived from cuanna elegant, comely.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In gv, a female given name, Anglicized as Constance
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)
- Frank Henry Cooneyb. 1872USCanadian-American politician; ninth Governor of Montana (1872-1935)
- Barbara Cooneyb. 1917USAmerican writer and illustrator of children's books
- Joan Ganz Cooneyb. 1929USAmerican television producer (born 1929)
- Patrick Cooneyb. 1931IEIrish politician (1931–2025)
- Ray Cooneyb. 1932GBEnglish playwright, actor, and director
- Kevin Cooneyb. 1945USAmerican actor
- Tim Cooneyb. 1951USAmerican sound engineer
- Mike Cooneyb. 1954USAmerican politician
- Michael Cooneyb. 1967GBBritish screenwriter, playwright, and director
- Jacob Cooneyb. 1981USAmerican film director
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 24 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #2,883 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,728 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,935 |
| 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 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 Cooney mean, and where does it come from?
- From Irish Gaelic O Cuana, ‘descendant of Cuana’, probably from cuanna ‘elegant’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Cooney?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkuni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Cooney have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Cooney, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cooney.
- How common is the name Cooney?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,455 people named Cooney in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
- How common is Cooney compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Cooney is the 270th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cooney?
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/cooneyThe 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, “Cooney” — the 270th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.