McDonald
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A surname from Scottish Gaelic
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məkdɑnəld/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McDonald is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Canada it is the 15th most common surname.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 921(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.2K
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than McDonald itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #325 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 566 (measured from records)
- 1 in 744 (inferred from the name graph)
≈690,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Macdonald in CA Canada, CN China.
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)
A surname from Scottish Gaelic.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
McDonald 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 | — | ≈690,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Macdonald | 35 |
| US United States | #78 | 180,497 | 1 in 1.8K | 180K | McDonald | 566 |
| GB United Kingdom | #48 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | listed | McDonald | 330 |
| CA Canada | #15 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Macdonald | 303 |
| AU Australia | #27 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 921 | 1 | McDonald | 282 |
| IE Ireland | #56 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | McDonald | 114 |
| NZ New Zealand | #24 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | McDonald | 166 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1,009 | 1 in 744 | 1K | — | 10 |
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); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
- Francis McDonaldb. 1891USactor (1891-1968)
- Joséphine Bakerb. 1906USnot in their usual nameAmerican-born French dancer, singer and actress (1906–1975)
- Arthur McDonaldb. 1943CACanadian physicist (born 1943)
- Mac McDonaldb. 1949USAmerican actor
- Michael McDonaldb. 1952USAmerican singer and keyboardist
- Christopher McDonaldb. 1955USAmerican actor
- Kevin McDonaldb. 1961CACanadian actor and comedian
- Mary Lou McDonaldb. 1969IEIrish politician, President of Sinn Féin (born 1969)
- Audra McDonaldb. 1970USAmerican actress and singer (born 1970)
- David Tennantb. 1971GBnot in their usual nameScottish actor (born 1971)
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 43 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 180K | #143 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 176K | #127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 173K | #145 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 63 | #562 |
| 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
- What does the name McDonald mean, and where does it come from?
- A surname from Scottish Gaelic. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name McDonald?
- In the etymology graph, MacDhòmhnaill is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does McDonald have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 687 thousand people named McDonald in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled macdonald.
- Where is McDonald most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, McDonald is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 744 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce McDonald?
- A machine transcription gives /məkdɑnəld/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name McDonald?
- In the United States, the national register counted 180,497 people named McDonald in 2010, about 1 in 1.8 thousand residents.
- How common is McDonald compared with other names?
- In Canada, McDonald is the 15th most common surname of 699,524 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McDonald?
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/mcdonaldThe 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, “McDonald” — the 15th most common surname in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.