Cowling
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Cowling, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Mathew de Couling 1260 AssC
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkaʊɫɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cowling is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 153K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 734K
- SESweden1 in 1.7M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 5 (measured from records)
- 1 in 153K (inferred from the name graph)
2,170 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Reference-verified
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Cowling, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Mathew de Couling 1260 AssC
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cowling 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.
2,170 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)
Cowling 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.
In English, A young or little cow; calf.
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)
- Herford T. Cowlingb. 1890USAmerican photographer and cinematographer (1890-1980)
- Thomas George Cowlingb. 1906GBBritish astronomer (1906–1990)
- Alfred Hozack Cowlingb. 1911CAOntario Member of Provincial Parliament, 1951-1971
- Bruce Cowlingb. 1919USAmerican actor (1919-1986)
- Brenda Cowlingb. 1925GBBritish actress (1925–2010)
- Marlene Cowlingb. 1941CACanadian politician
- Richard M. Cowlingb. 1955ZAbiologist and botanist from South Africa
- David Cowlingb. 1958GBEnglish footballer (born 1958)
- Gary Cowlingb. 1961USAmerican actor
- Lee Cowlingb. 1977GBEnglish footballer (born 1977)
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.2K | #13,916 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.2K | #12,982 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #14,939 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 12 | #109,635 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 11 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 11 | #125,516 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 8 | #47,217 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 6 | #176,378 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 6 | #48,888 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 3 | #153,097 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 3 | #23,134 |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Cowling mean, and where does it come from?
- from Cowling, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Mathew de Couling 1260 AssC Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Cowling?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkaʊɫɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Cowling have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.2 thousand people named Cowling, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cowling.
- Where is Cowling most common?
- Cowling is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 153 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Cowling?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,170 people named Cowling in 2010, about 1 in 153 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cowling?
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/cowlingThe 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, “Cowling”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.