McClelland

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

McClelland is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: variant of McClellan, with excrescent -d due to the devoicing of palatalized -n in Gaelic.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 17K
  • CACanada≈1 in 17K

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 States (measured from records)

14,092 people, 2010

Sources
416 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.6K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

variant of McClellan, with excrescent -d due to the devoicing of palatalized -n in Gaelic.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

McClelland 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.

Where McClelland is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—14,0921 in 24K14KMcClelland416
GB United Kingdom—≈4,000 est.≈1 in 17K—McClelland191
CA Canada—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 17K—McClelland155
AU Australia—≈2,000 est.≈1 in 13K—McClelland140
EG Egypt—≈1,700 est.≈1 in 63K—McClelland4
IE Ireland#649≈680 est.≈1 in 7.6K—McClelland38
AX Åland Islands—≈3 est.≈1 in 9.9K—McClelland2

14,092 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

McClelland is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Mc-Clelland, Mc Clelland

48 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

McClelland 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 different form of McClellan.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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)

18001850190019502000John McClelland, b. 1805Robert McClelland, b. 1807Jim McClelland, b. 1915David McClelland, b. 1917David McClelland, b. 1941James McClelland, b. 1948Donovan McClelland, b. 1949John McClelland, b. 1955Robert McClelland, b. 1958Mark McClelland, b. 1976

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 18 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting McClelland
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201014K#2,564
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200014K#2,435
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202013K#2,622
US United Stateswru 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

What does the name McClelland mean, and where does it come from?
variant of McClellan, with excrescent -d due to the devoicing of palatalized -n in Gaelic. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does McClelland have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named McClelland, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcclelland.
How common is the name McClelland?
In the United States, the national register counted 14,092 people named McClelland in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
How common is McClelland compared with other names?
In Ireland, McClelland is the 649th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about McClelland?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mcclelland

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “McClelland” — the 649th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how McClelland parses inside a full name →