McCullough
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicized form of the Gaelic surname Mac Cu Uladh, a patronymic from Cii Uladh ‘hound of Ulster’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
McCullough is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 5.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 6.8K
- USUnited States1 in 7.3K
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
- 483 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈200,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Cii Uladh‘hound(measured from records)
- Mac ConUladh(measured from records)
Anglicized form of the Gaelic surname Mac Cu Uladh, a patronymic from Cii Uladh ‘hound of Ulster’. Compare McNally, which is from Mac Con Uladh, genitive form of the same name. It has sometimes been erroneously associated with Gaelic cullach ‘wild boar’, and some famihes in County Sligo have translated it into English as Boar.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
McCullough 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 | — | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | — | McCullough | 5 |
| US United States | #599 | 45,852 | 1 in 7.3K | 46K | McCullough | 483 |
| GB United Kingdom | #757 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | McCullough | 195 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | McCullough | 7 |
| CA Canada | #685 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | McCullough | 198 |
| IE Ireland | #482 | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | — | McCullough | 56 |
| NZ New Zealand | #560 | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | McCullough | 89 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | McCullough | 4 |
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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Philo McCulloughb. 1893USAmerican film actor (1893-1981)
- David McCulloughb. 1933USAmerican historian and author (1933–2022)
- Colleen McCulloughb. 1937AUAustralian author (1937-2015)
- Bernie Macb. 1957USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (1957–2008)
- Julie McCulloughb. 1965USAmerican actress and comedian
- Suli McCulloughb. 1968USAmerican actor
- Kimberly McCulloughb. 1978USAmerican actress, television director and dancer
- Kára McCulloughb. 1991ITWinner of Miss USA 2017 (born 1991)
- Luke McCulloughb. 1994GBNorthern Irish footballer (born 1994)
- Chris McCulloughb. 1995USAmerican basketball player (born 1995)
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 16 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 46K | #755 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 44K | #708 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 44K | #769 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 McCullough come from?
- Anglicized form of the Gaelic surname Mac Cu Uladh, a patronymic from Cii Uladh ‘hound of Ulster’. Compare McNally, which is from Mac Con Uladh, genitive form of the same name. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name McCullough mean?
- Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of the Gaelic surname Mac Cu Uladh, a patronymic from Cii Uladh ‘hound of Ulster’.
- In which country does McCullough have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 201 thousand people named McCullough in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mccullough.
- How common is the name McCullough?
- In the United States, the national register counted 45,852 people named McCullough in 2010, about 1 in 7.3 thousand residents.
- How common is McCullough compared with other names?
- In Ireland, McCullough is the 482nd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McCullough?
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/mcculloughThe 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, “McCullough” — the 482nd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.