Grogan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Irish Gaelic Ó Grugáin or Ó Gruagáin, meaning ‘descendant of Grugán/Gruagán’, a personal name meaning ‘little angry one’ or ‘little hairy one’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Grogan is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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 Irish Gaelic Ó Grugáin or Ó Gruagáin, meaning ‘descendant of Grugán/Gruagán’, a personal name meaning ‘little angry one’ or ‘little hairy one’.
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)
Grogan counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 11K | — |
| ES Spain | — | 39 | — |
| GY Guyana | — | 28 | — |
| FI Finland | — | 23 | — |
| AR Argentina | — | 14 | — |
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 — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Grogan 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.
‘descendant of Grugdn’, a personal name from a dim. of grug anger, fierceness. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. 6 Gruagain ‘descendant of Gruagdn’, a personal name from a dim. of gruag hair. The patr. form Mac Gruagain (An¬ glicized McGrogan) is much rarer. Vars.: O’Grogaine, O’Growgane, Groggan, Groogan. Groleau see Grail Grolms see Jerome
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
1. reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Grugain ‘descendant of Griigdn', a personal name from a diminutive of grtig ‘anger’, ‘fierceness’. 2. reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic O Gruagain ‘descendant of Gruagdn', a personal name from a diminutive of gruag ‘hair’. The patronymic form Mac Gruagain (Anglicized McGrogan) is much rarer.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
‘descendant of Grugari, a personal name from a dim. of grug anger, fierceness. 2. Anglicized form of Gael. O Gruagain ‘descendant of Gruagari, a personal name from a dim. oigruag hair. The patr. form Mac Gruagain (Anglicized McGrogan) is much rarer. Vars.: O’Grogaine, O’Growgane, Groggan, Groogan.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Steven, football player
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Ewart Groganb. 1874GBBritish explorer and politician (1874-1967)
- James Groganb. 1931USAmerican figure skater (1931–2000)
- Emmett Groganb. 1943USAmerican anarchist (1944-1978)
- Steve Dennis Groganb. 1951USAmerican murderer and former member of the Manson Family
- Steve Groganb. 1953USAmerican football player
- John Groganb. 1957USAmerican journalist
- John Groganb. 1961GBBritish politician (born 1961)
- Clare Groganb. 1962GBScottish singer and actress
- Adrian Groganb. 1977AUAustralian Paralympic athlete
- Richard Groganb. 2000USAmerican rower
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 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,165 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #2,923 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,274 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 39 | #53,524 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 39 | #52,638 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 28 | #597 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 23 | #40,969 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 14 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Grogan mean, and where does it come from?
- From Irish Gaelic Ó Grugáin or Ó Gruagáin, meaning ‘descendant of Grugán/Gruagán’, a personal name meaning ‘little angry one’ or ‘little hairy one’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Grogan have the most bearers?
- Grogan is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Grogan?
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/groganThe 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, “Grogan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.