Kinsley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Kinsley, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Ralph de Kineslea 1191 Pl (Ess)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɪnzɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kinsley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 91K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 111K
- CNChina≈1 in 34K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 296 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 34K (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Kinsley, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Ralph de Kineslea 1191 Pl (Ess)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kinsley, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kinsley 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Kinsley | 4 |
| US United States | 2,996 | 1 in 111K | 27K | Kinsley | 296 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 215K | — | Kinsley | 27 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 91K | 4 | Kinsley | 95 |
| CA Canada | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 131K | 52 | Kinsley | 57 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈88 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Kinsley | 5 |
| IE Ireland | ≈76 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Kinsley | 11 |
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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Kinsley 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, habitational name from Kinsley in West Yorkshire, recorded in Domesday Book as Chineslai ‘woodland clearing (Old English leah) of a man called Cyne’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Probably also an altered spelling of various like-sounding German names, such as Kinzler, Kinsell, Kiinzli or Kiinzle (see Kuenzli).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A habitational surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Modern surname name; meaning uncertain.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Martin Kinsleyb. 1754USAmerican politician (1754-1835)
- Apollos Kinsleyb. 1766USAmerican engineer and inventor
- Albert Kinsleyb. 1852GBEnglish painter (1852–1945)
- Joseph E. Kinsleyb. 1897USAmerican lawyer and politician
- David Robert Kinsleyb. 1939USAmerican indologist (1939-2000)
- Michael Kinsleyb. 1951USAmerican political journalist, commentator television host
- Ken KinsleyCACanadian ice hockey player
- Colin KinsleyMayor of Prince George, British Columbia, 1996 - 2008
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 30 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3K | #10,675 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.8K | #10,527 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,401 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Kinsley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Kinsley, West Riding of Yorkshire; first attested Ralph de Kineslea 1191 Pl (Ess) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Kinsley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Kinsley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kinsley.
- How do you pronounce Kinsley?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɪnzɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Kinsley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,996 people named Kinsley in 2010, about 1 in 111 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kinsley?
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/kinsleyThe 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, “Kinsley”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.