McGuinness
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Mag Aonghuis, 'son of Angus'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/məˈɡɪnəs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McGuinness is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 5.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 13K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K
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
- 331 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Irish Gaelic Mag Aonghuis, 'son of Angus'
Sources 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)
McGuinness 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 | — | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 187K | — | McGuinness | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | McGuinness | 223 |
| US United States | — | 4,342 | 1 in 77K | 4.4K | McGuinness | 331 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | McGuinness | 163 |
| IE Ireland | #320 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | McGuinness | 123 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈630 est. | ≈1 in 60K | — | McGuinness | 105 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | McGuinness | 59 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register. 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)
McGuinness is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
posed of the elementsfiortn fair + gal valour. According to Black it has no connection with McKinley. Vars.: McGinnis, McEnnesse, McEnnis, Mclnnes, Mclnch, McKinch, McHinch; Maguin(n)ess, Maginness, Maginnis, Magennis, Meginniss; Guin(n)ess.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
Aonghuis, patr. from the given name Aonghus\ see Angus, McGinnis, McEnnesse, McEnnis, Mclnnes, Mclnch, McKinch, McHinch; Maguin(n)ess, Maginness, Maginnis, Magennis, Meginniss; Guin(n)ess. Vars.:
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
variant spelling of McGinnis.
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)
- James Kevin McGuinnessb. 1894USIrish-American screenwriter and producer
- Wilf McGuinnessb. 1937GBEnglish football player and manager (born 1937)
- Martin McGuinnessb. 1950GBSinn Féin politician and deputy First Minister (1950-2017)
- Frank McGuinnessb. 1953IEIrish writer (born 1953)
- Mairead McGuinnessb. 1959IEIrish politician and European Commissioner
- Yvonne McGuinnessb. 1972IEIrish artist
- Paddy McGuinnessb. 1973GBBritish actor, comedian and television presenter
- Ed McGuinnessb. 1974USartist
- Desmond Wolfeb. 1976GBnot in their usual nameBritish professional wrestler
- Josh Magennisb. 1990GBnot in their usual nameNorthern Irish association football player (born 1990)
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 22 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.4K | #7,329 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.3K | #7,650 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.3K | #7,110 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| 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 McGuinness mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Mag Aonghuis, 'son of Angus' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McGuinness?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈɡɪnəs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McGuinness have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.4 thousand people named McGuinness in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcguinness.
- How common is the name McGuinness?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,342 people named McGuinness in 2010, about 1 in 77 thousand residents.
- How common is McGuinness compared with other names?
- In Ireland, McGuinness is the 320th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McGuinness?
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/mcguinnessThe 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, “McGuinness” — the 320th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.