McCloy
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Gaelic MacLughaidh, 'son of Lewie' (pet form of Lewis); first attested Donald Clowie or Makcloye 1537–40 Black
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/məˈkɫɔɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McCloy is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 73K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 95K
- USUnited States1 in 202K
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)
- Sources
- 248 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 73K (inferred from the name graph)
1,648 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Gaelic MacLughaidh, 'son of Lewie' (pet form of Lewis); first attested Donald Clowie or Makcloye 1537–40 Black
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
McCloy 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 1,648 | 1 in 202K | 1.6K | McCloy | 248 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 95K | — | McCloy | 118 |
| AU Australia | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | McCloy | 79 |
| CA Canada | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 108K | — | McCloy | 69 |
| EG Egypt | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 445K | — | McCloy | 2 |
| IE Ireland | ≈64 est. | ≈1 in 81K | — | McCloy | 16 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈59 est. | ≈1 in 84K | — | McCloy | 30 |
1,648 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
McCloy 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Lughaidh ‘son of Lugaidh' (see Lewis).
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Samuel McCloyb. 1831GBIrish artist (1831-1904)
- John McCloyb. 1876USUnited States Navy Medal of Honor recipient
- William McCloyb. 1886AUcricketer (1886-1975)
- John J. McCloyb. 1895USAmerican lawyer and banker (1895-1989)
- Philip McCloyb. 1896GBScottish footballer (1896-1972)
- Helen McCloyb. 1904USAmerican writer (1904–1994)
- Nicol McCloyb. 1944GBbadminton player
- John J. McCloyb. 1945GBbadminton player
- Peter McCloyb. 1946GBScottish footballer (born 1946)
- Terence McCloyb. 2000CACanadian screenwriter
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 11 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #17,182 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,436 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,379 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 McCloy mean, and where does it come from?
- from Gaelic MacLughaidh, 'son of Lewie' (pet form of Lewis); first attested Donald Clowie or Makcloye 1537–40 Black Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- How do you pronounce McCloy?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈkɫɔɪ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McCloy have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.6 thousand people named McCloy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mccloy.
- How common is the name McCloy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,648 people named McCloy in 2010, about 1 in 202 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McCloy?
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/mccloyThe 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, “McCloy”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.