Ketley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Ketley, Shropshire, “glade frequented by cats”
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɛtɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ketley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 116K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 256K
- DKDenmark1 in 451K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 123 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 116K (inferred from the name graph)
≈570 people, est.
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Ketley, Shropshire, “glade frequented by cats”
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ketley 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 116K | listed | Ketley | 123 |
| BR Brazil | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 1M | 2.4K | Ketley | 58 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 470K | — | Ketley | 9 |
| AU Australia | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 256K | — | Ketley | 47 |
| US United States | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 3.6M | — | Ketley | 73 |
| DK Denmark | 13 | 1 in 451K | 13 | — | — |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 601K | — | Ketley | 8 |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Ketley 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.
In English, from Ketley, Shropshire; first attested Edward Kettlye 1642 PrD
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, so called from OE catta (wild) cat (see Catt) + leak wood, clearing. Kett I. English (Norfolk): var. of Kite. 2. Jewish (Ash¬ kenazic): of unknown origin.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, so called from OE catta (wild) cat (see Catt) + leah wood, clearing. Kett 1. English (Norfolk): var. of Kite. 2. Jewish (Ashkenazic): of unknown origin.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A suburban village and civil parish in Telford and Wrekin district, Shropshire, England (OS grid ref SJ6711).
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)
- Joseph Ketleyb. 1802GYBritish missionary
- Charles Ketleyb. 1856GBBritish association football player (1856-?)
- Richard Ketleyb. 1976ZAZimbabwean Contemporary Artist
- Chris Ketleyb. 1985musical artist
- Alex KetleyUSAmerican choreographer
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 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 326 | #24,652 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 13 | #33,515 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Ketley mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Ketley, Shropshire, “glade frequented by cats” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Ketley?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛtɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Ketley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 568 people named Ketley in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ketley.
- How common is the name Ketley?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 13 people named Ketley, about 1 in 451 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ketley?
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/ketleyThe 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, “Ketley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.