Hooley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Hoole, Cheshire or Lancashire
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/huːli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hooley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 58K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 79K
- USUnited States1 in 189K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 250 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 58K (inferred from the name graph)
≈12,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Hoole, Cheshire or Lancashire
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hooley 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 114K | — | Hooley | 3 |
| US United States | 1,761 | 1 in 189K | 1.8K | Hooley | 250 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 58K | listed | Hooley | 136 |
| EG Egypt | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 280K | — | Hooley | 4 |
| IT Italy | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 170K | — | Hooley | 3 |
| AU Australia | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 79K | — | Hooley | 91 |
| CA Canada | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 188K | — | Hooley | 46 |
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 hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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)
Hooley 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.
habitational name from places called Hoole, in Cheshire and Lancashire. The former is so called from the Old English dative case hole of holh ‘hollow’, ‘depression’; the latter from Middle English hule ‘hut’, ‘shelter’ (Old English hulu ‘husk’, ‘covering’). In both cases the final -e is now silent in the place name, but has been retained in the surname, with consequent alteration in the spelling.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, called Hoole in Ches. and Lancs. The former is so called from the OE dat. case hole of holh hollow, depression; the latter from ME hule hut, shelter (OE hulu husk, covering). In both cases the final -e is now silent in the placename, but has been retained in the surname, with consequent alter¬ ation in the spelling. Vars.: Whooley, Hoole.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A party or celebration; an evening of traditional music and dance.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, A variant spelling of Whooley in west Cork
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)
- William F. Hooleyb. 1861USAmerican bass singer, pioneer recording artist (1861-1918)
- Reginald Walter Hooleyb. 1865GBBritish paleontologist
- Frank Hooleyb. 1923GBBritish politician (1923-2015)
- Christopher Hooleyb. 1928GBBritish mathematician
- Joan Hooleyb. 1936JMBritish actress
- Joe Hooleyb. 1938GBEnglish footballer and manager (born 1938)
- Darlene Hooleyb. 1939USAmerican politician (born 1939)
- Terri Hooleyb. 1948GBIrish record label founder
- Will Hooleyb. 1993GBEnglish rugby union footballer (b. 1993)
- Jill M. HooleyGBBritish American professor of psychology
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 | 1.8K | #15,710 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.8K | #16,359 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,238 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Hooley mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Hoole, Cheshire or Lancashire Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Hooley?
- A machine transcription gives /huːli/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Hooley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 12 thousand people named Hooley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hooley.
- How common is the name Hooley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,761 people named Hooley in 2010, about 1 in 189 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Hooley?
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/hooleyThe 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, “Hooley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.