Donohue
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Irish Gaelic Ó Donnchadha, literally ‘brown(-haired) warrior’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈdɑnəˌhju/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Donohue is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 24K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 646K
- BEBelgium1 in 1.1M
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)
- Sources
- 132 (measured from records)
- 1 in 24K (inferred from the name graph)
13,919 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Irish Gaelic Ó Donnchadha, literally ‘brown(-haired) warrior’.
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)
Donohue 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 | 13,919 | 1 in 24K | 14K | Donohue | 132 |
| ES Spain | 25 | 1 in 2M | 25 | Donohue | 6 |
| PL Poland | 21 | 1 in 1.8M | 14 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 13 | 1 in 646K | 13 | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | 11 | 1 in 1.1M | 11 | — | 1 |
13,919 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); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)
Donohue 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.
‘descendant of Donnchadh', a personal name composed of the elements donn brown (see Dunn 1) + cath battle. Vars.: O’Donohue, 0’Donog(h)ue, O’Donohoe, O’Donochowe; O’Donaghie, O’Dunaghy; Donoghue, Dona(g)hue, Donohoe, Donaghoe; Donaghie, Donagh(e)y, Denaghy, Dennehy; Donachie (Scots); Dennis.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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)
- Jack Donohueb. 1908USAmerican actor and director (1908-1984)
- Jack Donohueb. 1931USAmerican basketball player-coach (1931-2003)
- Mark Donohueb. 1937USracecar driver (1937-1975)
- Tom J. Donohueb. 1938USAmerican businessman; United States Chamber of Commerce President (1938–2024)
- Mary Donohueb. 1947USAmerican judge (born 1947)
- David Donohueb. 1967USAmerican racing driver
- Nigel Donohueb. 1969GBBritish judoka
- Erin Donohueb. 1983USAmerican middle-distance runner
- Kether Donohueb. 1985USAmerican actress
- Zachary Donohueb. 1991USAmerican ice dancer
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 16 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,587 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,584 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,466 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 25 | #72,748 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 25 | #71,513 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 14 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 14 | #109,490 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 13 | #50,156 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 11 | #66,768 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 7 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 7 | #162,748 |
| 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 Donohue mean, and where does it come from?
- From Irish Gaelic Ó Donnchadha, literally ‘brown(-haired) warrior’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Donohue?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdɑnəˌhju/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Donohue have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Donohue, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled donohue.
- Where is Donohue most common?
- Donohue is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 24 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Donohue?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,919 people named Donohue in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Donohue?
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/donohueThe 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, “Donohue”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.