McGough
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Mag Eochadha, ‘son of Eochaidh’, a personal name meaning literally ‘horseman’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/məˈɡaʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McGough is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 50K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 59K
- USUnited States1 in 65K
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 351 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from Irish Gaelic Mag Eochadha, ‘son of Eochaidh’, a personal name meaning literally ‘horseman’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)McGough 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | McGough | 2 |
| US United States | — | 5,150 | 1 in 65K | 5.2K | McGough | 351 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | McGough | 142 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈720 est. | ≈1 in 87K | — | McGough | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | McGough | 86 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | McGough | 3 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | McGough | 36 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | McGough | 29 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #603 | — | — | — | McGough | 1 |
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)McGough 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 Mag Eochadha, a patronymic from the personal name Eochaidh, variant Eachaidh, ‘horseman’, a derivative of each ‘horse’.
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)- John McGoughb. 1876GBScottish athlete
- Richard McGoughb. 1892GBEnglish footballer (1892-1917)
- Roger McGoughb. 1937GBBritish writer and poet
- David Christopher McGoughb. 1944GBEnglish priest (1944–2023)
- Peter McGoughb. 1958USAmerican artist (born 1958)
- Mark McGoughb. 1988AUAustralian soccer player
- Scott McGoughb. 1989USAmerican baseball player
- Philip McGoughGBBritish actor
- Bruce McGoughUSeconomist (Oregon State University)
- Matthew McGoughUSAmerican writer
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.2K | #6,574 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5K | #6,317 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.9K | #6,614 |
| 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 McGough mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Mag Eochadha, ‘son of Eochaidh’, a personal name meaning literally ‘horseman’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McGough?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈɡaʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McGough have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named McGough in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcgough.
- How common is the name McGough?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,150 people named McGough in 2010, about 1 in 65 thousand residents.
- How common is McGough compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, McGough is the 603rd most common surname of 30,187 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McGough?
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/mcgoughThe 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, “McGough” — the 603rd most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.