Kirkby
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from one of the places named Kirby or Kirkby; first attested Godebold de Kirkebi 1121–18 Bury (Sf)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɝkbi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kirkby is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
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 one of the places named Kirby or Kirkby; first attested Godebold de Kirkebi 1121–18 Bury (Sf)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
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)
Kirkby is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A placename
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)
- John Kirkbyb. 1250Bishop of Carlisle
- Ollie Kirkbyb. 1886USAmerican actress (1886 – 1964)
- Elisabeth Kirkbyb. 1921AUBritish-Australian actress and politician (1921–2026)
- Sydney Kirkbyb. 1933AUAustralian surveyor and explorer (1933–2024)
- Mike Kirkbyb. 1937GBBritish geographer
- Diane Kirkbyb. 1948AUAustralian historian
- Emma Kirkbyb. 1949GBEnglish soprano
- Bruce Kirkbyb. 1968CACanadian photographer
- Tim Kirkbyb. 1970GBBritish film and television director
- Jasper KirkbyGBBritish physicist
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 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 475 | #48,050 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 451 | #47,107 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 412 | #48,196 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 43 | #12,064 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 21 | #83,146 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 21 | #80,648 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 14 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7 | #79,838 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 7 | #84,965 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 6 | #74,434 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #267,460 |
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 Kirkby mean, and where does it come from?
- from one of the places named Kirby or Kirkby; first attested Godebold de Kirkebi 1121–18 Bury (Sf) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce Kirkby?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɝkbi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kirkby have the most bearers?
- Kirkby is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom.
What do you want to know about Kirkby?
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/kirkbyThe 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, “Kirkby”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.