Kerrigan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Ciaragáin, descendant of Ciaragán, a nickname meaning literally “little little dark one”
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɛɹɪɡən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kerrigan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 50K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 652K
- BEBelgium1 in 1.5M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 10 (measured from records)
- 1 in 50K (inferred from the name graph)
6,714 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
from Irish Gaelic Ó Ciaragáin, descendant of Ciaragán, a nickname meaning literally “little little dark one”
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kerrigan 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 | 6,714 | 1 in 50K | 6.7K | Kerrigan | 10 |
| ES Spain | 22 | 1 in 2.3M | 22 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 9 | 1 in 652K | 9 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 8 | 1 in 1.5M | 8 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 4 | 1 in 2.1M | 4 | — | — |
6,714 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Kerrigan 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.
Vars. (of 1): Le Keux, Lequeux. (Of 2): Kehoe, Keyho(e) (see also Keogh). ‘descendant of Ciaragan’, a byname from a double dim. of ciar dark, black (cf. Kearns and Carey). John de Caiho was one of the sheriffs of London in 1201-2, and may well be an ancestor of some bearers of this name. Vars.: Ker(i)gan, O’Kerrigane, O’Kierrigain. Keyes 1. English: var. of Kay.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Anglicized form of Gaelic O Ciaragain ‘descendant of Ciaragdn’, a byname from a double diminutive of ciar ‘black’, ‘dark’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Thomas Anthony, US poet, editor,
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, translator
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)
- J. Warren Kerriganb. 1879USAmerican actor and director (1879-1947)
- J. M. Kerriganb. 1884IEIrish actor (1884-1964)
- Kim McLaganb. 1948GBnot in their usual nameBritish model (1948-2006)
- Joe Kerriganb. 1954USAmerican baseball player and coach
- Lodge Kerriganb. 1964USAmerican screenwriter and director (born 1964)
- Nancy Kerriganb. 1969USAmerican figure skater (born 1969)
- Jonathan Kerriganb. 1972GBBritish actor and composer
- Justin Kerriganb. 1974GBBritish film director and screenwriter
- Danny Kerriganb. 1982GBEnglish footballer (born 1982)
- Ryan Kerriganb. 1988USAmerican football player (born 1988)
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 26 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.7K | #5,204 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.4K | #5,831 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.3K | #6,144 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 22 | #80,414 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 22 | #78,058 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 9 | #42,715 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 8 | #79,466 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| 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
- 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 Kerrigan mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Ó Ciaragáin, descendant of Ciaragán, a nickname meaning literally “little little dark one” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Kerrigan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɛɹɪɡən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kerrigan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.7 thousand people named Kerrigan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kerrigan.
- Where is Kerrigan most common?
- Kerrigan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 50 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kerrigan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,714 people named Kerrigan in 2010, about 1 in 50 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kerrigan?
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/kerriganThe 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, “Kerrigan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.