McKelvey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Shealbhaigh, ‘son of Sealbhacri, a personal name from the adjective sealbhach ‘rich in herds’, ‘rich’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
McKelvey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 23Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 35Kfew records
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 41K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 342 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
7,043 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Shealbhaigh, ‘son of Sealbhacri, a personal name from the adjective sealbhach ‘rich in herds’, ‘rich’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)McKelvey 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 | 7,043 | 1 in 47K | 7K | McKelvey | 342 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | McKelvey | 133 |
| CA Canada | ≈950 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | McKelvey | 86 |
| AU Australia | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | McKelvey | 84 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 189K | — | McKelvey | 12 |
| SG Singapore | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | McKelvey | 3 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | McKelvey | 41 |
| IE Ireland | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | McKelvey | 27 |
7,043 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)McKelvey 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 Giolla Bhuidhe (see McEvoy).
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)- Susan Adams McKelveyb. 1883USAmerican botanist (1883-1964)
- Joe McKelveyb. 1898GBIrish republican (1898–1922)
- Vincent Ellis McKelveyb. 1916USAmerican geologist (1916-1987)
- William McKelveyb. 1934GBBritish politician (1934-2016)
- Andrew McKelveyb. 1934USAmerican philanthropist (1934–2008)
- Trish McKelveyb. 1942NZcricketer
- Richard McKelveyb. 1944USAmerican political scientist (1944–2002)
- Jim McKelveyb. 1965USAmerican computer scientist and businessman
- Miguel McKelveyb. 1975USAmerican businessman
- Charlamagne tha Godb. 1978USnot in their usual nameAmerican radio personality
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)15 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7K | #4,985 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.9K | #4,722 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.8K | #4,973 |
| 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 McKelvey mean, and where does it come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Shealbhaigh, ‘son of Sealbhacri, a personal name from the adjective sealbhach ‘rich in herds’, ‘rich’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does McKelvey have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.0 thousand people named McKelvey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mckelvey.
- How common is the name McKelvey?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,043 people named McKelvey in 2010, about 1 in 47 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McKelvey?
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/mckelveyThe 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, “McKelvey”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.