Guinness
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Reduced form of McGuinness
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡɪnɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Guinness is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 211K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 2.1M
- IEIreland≈1 in 48K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 172 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 48K (inferred from the name graph)
≈310 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Reduced form of McGuinness.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Guinness 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 211K | — | Guinness | 113 |
| US United States | 157 | 1 in 2.1M | 158 | Guinness | 172 |
| IE Ireland | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 48K | listed | Guinness | 70 |
| AU Australia | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 342K | — | Guinness | 51 |
| IT Italy | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | — | Guinness | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 172K | — | Guinness | 24 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | 1 | 1 in 101K | 1 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the irish-family-names-grehan-1993 register; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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)
Guinness 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, Irish stout
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)
- Arthur Guinnessb. 1725IEIrish brewer and the founder of the Guinness brewery business and family (1725–1803)
- Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyneb. 1880GBBritish politician, businessman and army officer (1880-1944)
- Judy Guinnessb. 1910IEBritish fencer (1910–1952)
- Alec Guinnessb. 1914GBBritish actor (1914–2000)
- Brigid Guinnessb. 1920IEEnglish noblewoman
- Matthew Guinnessb. 1940GBBritish actor
- Peter Guinnessb. 1950GBBritish actor
- Hugo Guinnessb. 1959GBBritish artist, illustrator, and writer
- Daphne Guinnessb. 1967IEBritish and Irish artist and personality
- Josh Magennisb. 1990GBnot in their usual nameNorthern Irish association football player (born 1990)
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 11 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 158 | #116,774 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 157 | #111,988 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 117 | #133,114 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 1 | #261 |
| IE Ireland | Irish Family Names (Grehan, 1993) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Guinness mean, and where does it come from?
- Reduced form of McGuinness. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Guinness?
- In the United States, the national register counted 157 people named Guinness in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 million residents.
- How do you pronounce Guinness?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡɪnɪs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Guinness have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 312 people named Guinness in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled guinness.
What do you want to know about Guinness?
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/guinnessThe 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, “Guinness”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.