McArthur
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Arthur’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/məˈkɑɹθɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McArthur is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 9.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 10K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 13K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 416 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈95,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Arthur’. See also Carter (ii).
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)
McArthur 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 | — | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | McArthur | 4 |
| US United States | — | 12,683 | 1 in 26K | 13K | McArthur | 416 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | McArthur | 219 |
| CA Canada | #988 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 1 | McArthur | 183 |
| AU Australia | #927 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | 1 | McArthur | 158 |
| NZ New Zealand | #775 | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | — | McArthur | 83 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #125 | — | — | — | McArthur | 1 |
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; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)
McArthur is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Artair, a patronymic from the Gaelic form of the personal name Arthur.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic.
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)
- Duncan McArthurb. 1772USAmerican politician (1772-1839)
- Malcolm McArthurb. 1882AUAustralian rugby union player (1882–1961)
- Edwin McArthurb. 1907USAmerican conductor
- William S. McArthurb. 1951USUnited States Army Colonel and NASA astronaut
- Alex McArthurb. 1957USAmerican actor
- Kimberly McArthurb. 1962USAmerican actor and playboy playmate
- Murray McArthurb. 1966GBEnglish actor
- Megan McArthurb. 1971USNASA astronaut
- Adam McArthurb. 1982USAmerican actor
- James McArthurb. 1987GBScottish association football player
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 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,844 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,721 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,907 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- Where does the name McArthur come from?
- from Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Arthur’. See also Carter (ii). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McArthur?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈkɑɹθɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name McArthur mean?
- Recorded meaning: from Scottish Gaelic, ‘son of Arthur’.
- In which country does McArthur have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 95 thousand people named McArthur in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcarthur.
- How common is the name McArthur?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,683 people named McArthur in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
- How common is McArthur compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, McArthur is the 125th most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McArthur?
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/mcarthurThe 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, “McArthur” — the 125th most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.