Kearns
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kearns is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Cein'n ‘descendant of Ceirin’, a personal name from a diminutive of ciar ‘dark’, ‘black’.
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 15K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 419 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
15,136 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Cein'n ‘descendant of Ceirin’, a personal name from a diminutive of ciar ‘dark’, ‘black’. English patronymic -s has been added superfluously.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kearns 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 | — | 15,136 | 1 in 22K | 15K | Kearns | 419 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | Kearns | 198 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Kearns | 156 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Kearns | 52 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 141K | — | Kearns | 5 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Kearns | 149 |
| IE Ireland | #323 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Kearns | 109 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Kearns | 74 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kearns | 1 |
15,136 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; 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)
Kearns is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
cendant of Ceirin", a personal name from a dim. of ciar dark, black (cogn with the Slav, word cherny, cf. Russ. Chernyakov).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
dant of Ceirin’, a personal name from a dim. of ciar dark, black (cogn with the Slav, word chemy, cf. Russ. CherNYAKOV).
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)
- Thomas Kearnsb. 1862USUnited States Senator from Utah (1862–1918)
- Allen Kearnsb. 1894CACanadian musical theatre actor (1894–1956)
- Joseph Kearnsb. 1907USAmerican actor (1907-1962)
- Billy Kearnsb. 1923USAmerican actor (1923–1992)
- Doris Kearns Goodwinb. 1943USAmerican biographer and historian (born 1943)
- Michael Kearnsb. 1950USAmerican journalist
- Austin Kearnsb. 1980USAmerican baseball player
- Gerard Kearnsb. 1984GBBritish actor
- Alicia Kearnsb. 1987GBBritish politician
- Missy Bo Kearnsb. 2001GBEnglish footballer
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 22 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,394 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,330 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,502 |
| 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 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
- Where does the name Kearns come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Cein'n ‘descendant of Ceirin’, a personal name from a diminutive of ciar ‘dark’, ‘black’. English patronymic -s has been added superfluously. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Kearns mean?
- Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Cein'n ‘descendant of Ceirin’, a personal name from a diminutive of ciar ‘dark’, ‘black’.
- In which country does Kearns have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Kearns, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kearns.
- How common is the name Kearns?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,136 people named Kearns in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
- How common is Kearns compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Kearns is the 323rd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kearns?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kearnsThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kearns” — the 323rd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.