Mackenzie
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Coinneach’, literally ‘attractive’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/makənzi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mackenzie is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 3.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 3.7K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.7K
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
- 469 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈16,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Coinneach’, literally ‘attractive’.
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)
Mackenzie 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 | #369 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 5 | Mackenzie | 265 |
| US United States | — | 13,733 | 1 in 24K | 119K | Mackenzie | 469 |
| CA Canada | #284 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 18 | Mackenzie | 264 |
| AU Australia | #344 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 385 | Mackenzie | 209 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Mackenzie | 85 |
| NZ New Zealand | #288 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 54 | Mackenzie | 136 |
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); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Mackenzie is also recorded in 5 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 Gaelic MacCoinneach 'son of Coinneach (comely)'; first attested Makbeth Makkyneth 1264 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Named for Kenneth (Gaelic Coinnich); oldest written record 1264 at Dull in Angus (Makbeth Makkyneth).
as a nameScottish Surnames
, ° Mainly North American: transferred use of the Scottish surname, which is from Gaelic Mac Coinnich, a patronymic from Coinneach ‘comely’. The z of the surname represents the medieval letter yogh, which was pronounced as a ‘y’ glide. In North America this is more commonly used for girls than boys. Variants: Makenzie, Makensie (9).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic of Scottish origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Scottish Gaelic: from the stream
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)
- Alexander Mackenzieb. 1764CAScottish explorer and fur trader (1764-1820)
- Alexander Mackenzieb. 1822CA2nd Prime Minister of Canada (1822-1892)
- George Henry Mackenzieb. 1837USAmerican journalist (1837–1891)
- Thomas Mackenzieb. 1854NZPrime Minister of New Zealand (1854-1930)
- John Mackenzieb. 1928GBScottish film director (1928–2011)
- Don McKenzieb. 1947USnot in their usual nameAmerican swimmer (1947–2008)
- Peter MacKenzieb. 1961USAmerican actor
- David Mackenzieb. 1966GBBritish film director
- J. C. MacKenzieb. 1970CACanadian actor
- Alastair Mackenzieb. 1970GBBritish actor
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 71 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,628 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,621 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,515 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Mackenzie mean, and where does it come from?
- From Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Coinneach’, literally ‘attractive’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Mackenzie have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 16 thousand people named Mackenzie in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mackenzie.
- What are other forms of the name Mackenzie?
- In the etymology graph, McKenzie is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Mackenzie?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,733 people named Mackenzie in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Mackenzie compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Mackenzie is the 369th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Mackenzie?
- A machine transcription gives /makənzi/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Mackenzie?
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/mackenzieThe 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, “Mackenzie” — the 369th most common surname in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.