Kinsella
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic O Cinnsealaigh, 'descendant of Cinnsealach', literally 'haughty'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kinˈsɛɫə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kinsella is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- IEIreland
- GBUnited Kingdom
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Irish Gaelic O Cinnsealaigh, 'descendant of Cinnsealach', literally 'haughty'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Kinsella 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, O Cinnsealach; originally Mac Murrough; sept of Wexford and Wicklow
as a nameIrish family names
‘descendant of Cinnsealach’, a byname meaning ‘Proud’, ‘Overbearing’. Vars.: O’Kynsillaghe, Kinshela, Kinsley Var.: Kingscott.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Anglicized form of Gaelic Ui Ceinnsealaigh ‘descendant of Cinnsealach', a personal name probably meaning ‘chief warrior’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Irish, Cinnsealach. One of the few Gaelic-Irish surnames without the prefix Ο or Mac, being taken from the ancient clan name Uí Ceinnsealaigh which became a territorial designation covering much of the north of Co. Wexford. This sept is a branch of the MacMurroughs. IF Map Carlow-Wexford
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)
- Thomas Kinsellab. 1928IEIrish writer, poet, translator and publisher (1928–2021)
- John Kinsellab. 1932IEIrish composer
- W. P. Kinsellab. 1935CACanadian author (1935–2016)
- Noël Kinsellab. 1939CACanadian politician (1939–2023)
- Pat Kinsellab. 1943GBFootballer (born 1943)
- John Kinsellab. 1952USAmerican swimmer
- Mark Kinsellab. 1972IEIrish footballer
- Mike Kinsellab. 1977USAmerican musician
- Liam Kinsellab. 1996IEFootballer (born 1996)
- Alice Kinsellab. 2001GBBritish artistic gymnast
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 24 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.2K | #7,920 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.1K | #7,751 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.1K | #7,530 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 68 | #36,191 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 68 | #35,845 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 34 | #32,554 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 24 | #21,960 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 17 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 15 | #56,352 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 13 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 13 | #115,303 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 11 | #36,524 |
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
- What does the name Kinsella mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic O Cinnsealaigh, 'descendant of Cinnsealach', literally 'haughty' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Kinsella?
- A machine transcription gives /kinˈsɛɫə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kinsella have the most bearers?
- Kinsella is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Kinsella?
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/kinsellaThe 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, “Kinsella”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.