McCauley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Amhiaoibh or Mac Amhiaidh ‘son of Olaf’, from Gaelic forms of the Old Norse personal name Aleifr, Oldfr
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məˈkɔɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McCauley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 13K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 14K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14K
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
- 441 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈180,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Amhiaoibh or Mac Amhiaidh ‘son of Olaf’, from Gaelic forms of the Old Norse personal name Aleifr, Oldfr. Compare McAuliffe.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
McCauley 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 | — | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.9K | — | McCauley | 6 |
| US United States | — | 24,743 | 1 in 13K | 25K | McCauley | 441 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | McCauley | 168 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 1 | McCauley | 164 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | McCauley | 9 |
| IE Ireland | #637 | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | McCauley | 70 |
| NZ New Zealand | #924 | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | — | McCauley | 53 |
| PS Palestine | #628 | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | McCauley | 2 |
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; 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)
McCauley 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Amhalghaidh ‘son of Amhalghadh', a personal name of uncertain origin.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic [in turn from Old Norse].
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, heroine, known as Molly Pitcher
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Mary, American Revolutionary
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Rosa Parksb. 1913USnot in their usual namecivil rights activist
- Annie Rossb. 1930GBnot in their usual nameBritish-American actress, singer and vocalist
- Kirby McCauleyb. 1941USAmerican book editor and literary agent (1941-2014)
- Peter McCauleyb. 1950NZNew Zealand actor
- Barbara McCauleyb. 1951USAmerican writer
- Matthew McCauleyb. 1954CACanadian record producer
- Stephen McCauleyb. 1955USAmerican writer
- Jack J. McCauleyb. 1959USfounder and president of R0R3 Engineered Solutions
- Gordon McCauleyb. 1972NZNew Zealand racing cyclist
- Alyn McCauleyb. 1977CACanadian ice hockey 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 23 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 25K | #1,442 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 24K | #1,360 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,505 |
| 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 McCauley come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Amhiaoibh or Mac Amhiaidh ‘son of Olaf’, from Gaelic forms of the Old Norse personal name Aleifr, Oldfr. Compare McAuliffe. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce McCauley?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈkɔɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name McCauley mean?
- Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Amhiaoibh or Mac Amhiaidh ‘son of Olaf’, from Gaelic forms of the Old Norse personal name Aleifr, Oldfr.
- In which country does McCauley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 176 thousand people named McCauley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McCauley.
- How common is the name McCauley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 24,743 people named McCauley in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
- How common is McCauley compared with other names?
- In Palestine, McCauley is the 628th most common surname of 17,903 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McCauley?
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/mccauleyThe 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, “McCauley” — the 628th most common surname in Palestine. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.