Keeling
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from ME keling ‘young codfish’; first attested Ælfuine Celing c1095 Bury
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkiɫɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Keeling is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 37K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 547K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 560K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Keeling itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 53 (measured from records)
- 1 in 37K (inferred from the name graph)
8,938 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Килинг in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan.
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 ME keling ‘young codfish’; first attested Ælfuine Celing c1095 Bury
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Keeling 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 | 8,938 | 1 in 37K | 8.9K | Keeling | 11 |
| IN India | 984as Kiling | 1 in 1.3M | 984 | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 194as Kiling | 1 in 1.1M | 194 | — | — |
| RU Russia | ≈65 est. | ≈1 in 2.2M | — | Килинг | 53 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 469K | — | Килинг | 16 |
| CH Switzerland | 15 | 1 in 560K | 15 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 10 | 1 in 547K | 10 | — | — |
8,938 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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Keeling 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.
Americanized spelling of German Kuhllng, a patronymic from Colo, probably a short form of an old personal name meaning ‘helmet’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nickname from Middle English keling ‘young codfish’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, medieval given name, originally an OE patr. from a short form of any of the various cpd personal names with the first element ceol keel, ship. Keighly; Keeley; K(e)ightley, Keetley. Kitlee; Cichle (Wales). K(e)itley, Keatley,
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, present participle and gerund of keel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, This English name is in Ireland since the seventeenth century and all the earlier references to it relate to Dublin. It is quite distinct from Keelan, but is occasionally found as a synonym of Keeley
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 Keelingb. 1578GBBritish sea captain for the East India Company
- William Knight Keelingb. 1807GBBritish artist and illustrator (1807-1886)
- Walter Angus Keelingb. 1873USUnited States federal judge (1873-1945)
- Katharine Woolleyb. 1888GBnot in their usual nameBritish drawer (1888–1945)
- Edward Keelingb. 1888GBBritish politician (1888-1954)
- Charles David Keelingb. 1928USAmerican scientist (1928–2005)
- Harold Keelingb. 1963USAmerican basketball player
- Jayson Keelingb. 1966USAmerican visual artist (1966–2022)
- Stephen Keelingb. 1966GBBritish composer
- Shaun Keelingb. 1987ZASouth African 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 17 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.9K | #3,975 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.1K | #4,023 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.9K | #4,363 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 15 | #45,119 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 10 | #57,689 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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
- 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 Keeling mean, and where does it come from?
- from ME keling ‘young codfish’; first attested Ælfuine Celing c1095 Bury Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Keeling?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkiɫɪŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Keeling have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.9 thousand people named Keeling, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled keeling.
- Where is Keeling most common?
- Keeling is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 37 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Keeling?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,938 people named Keeling in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Keeling?
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/keelingThe 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, “Keeling”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.