Harrington
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) also Harington: ‘person from Harrington’, a place-name in Cumbria, Lincolnshire or Northamptonshire; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O hArrachtdin, meaning ‘little powerful one’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/hɛɹɪŋtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Harrington is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.8K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.3K
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
- 509 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
66,959 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) also Harington: ‘person from Harrington’, a place-name in Cumbria, Lincolnshire or Northamptonshire; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O hArrachtdin, meaning ‘little powerful one’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Harrington 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 | #434 | 66,959 | 1 in 5K | 67K | Harrington | 509 |
| GB United Kingdom | #380 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.8K | — | Harrington | 254 |
| KP North Korea | #323 | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Harrington | 2 |
| CA Canada | #486 | ≈7,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Harrington | 190 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Harrington | 4 |
| IE Ireland | #197 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Harrington | 117 |
| NZ New Zealand | #383 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Harrington | 92 |
| IS Iceland | #493 | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Harrington | 3 |
66,959 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. 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)
Harrington is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Harrington (Cumbria, Lancashire, Northants); first attested William de Harinton’ 1202 AssL
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 hOireachtaigh ‘descendant of Oireachtach', a byname meaning ‘member of the assembly’ or ‘frequenting assemblies’. FOREBEARSIHarington is the name of a family derived from the place in Cumbria. The earliest recorded bearer of the name was Robert de Heverington, living in the reign of Richard I (1189-99).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 hArrachtain ‘descendant of Arrachtdn', a personal name from a diminutive of arrac/ztac/i ‘mighty’, ‘powerful’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 hlongardail, later 6 hUrdail, ‘descendant of longardaV.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A habitational surname from Old English from several places of that name in England.
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)
- Curtis Harringtonb. 1926USAmerican film director (1926-2007)
- Michael Harringtonb. 1928USAmerican socialist writer (1928–1989)
- Laura Harringtonb. 1958USAmerican actress
- Paul Harringtonb. 1960IEIrish singer
- Mike Harringtonb. 1964USco-founder of Valve Corporation
- Adam Harringtonb. 1970USAmerican voice actor (born 1970)
- Jay Harringtonb. 1971USAmerican actor (born 1971)
- Desmond Harringtonb. 1976USAmerican actor (born 1976)
- Al Harringtonb. 1980USAmerican basketball player (born 1980)
- Adam Harringtonb. 1980USAmerican basketball player (born 1980)
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 42 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 67K | #500 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 65K | #462 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 64K | #515 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 given-name tokens
- 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 Harrington mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) also Harington: ‘person from Harrington’, a place-name in Cumbria, Lincolnshire or Northamptonshire; (ii) from Irish Gaelic O hArrachtdin, meaning ‘little powerful one’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Harrington?
- A machine transcription gives /hɛɹɪŋtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Harrington have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 67 thousand people named Harrington, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled harrington.
- How common is the name Harrington?
- In the United States, the national register counted 66,959 people named Harrington in 2010, about 1 in 5.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Harrington compared with other names?
- In the United States, Harrington is the 434th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Harrington?
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/harringtonThe 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, “Harrington” — the 434th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.