McKenney

surname · Latin script

Meaning: A surname from Scottish Gaelic

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

McKenney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • IEIreland≈1 in 39Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 40K
  • CACanada≈1 in 44K

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)

7,265 people, 2010

Record sources
357 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

A surname from Scottish Gaelic.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where the surname McKenney is found

(measured from records)

McKenney 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.

Where McKenney is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States7,2651 in 46K7.3KMcKenney357
GB United Kingdom≈1,700 est.≈1 in 40K—McKenney51
CA Canada≈930 est.≈1 in 44K—McKenney80
AU Australia≈490 est.≈1 in 55K—McKenney45
KP North Korea≈150 est.≈1 in 173K—McKenney2
IE Ireland≈140 est.≈1 in 39K—McKenney3
SG Singapore≈130 est.≈1 in 46K—McKenney1

7,265 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling mckenney. 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)
19001920194019601980Ruth McKenney, b. 1911Don McKenney, b. 1934Todd McKenney, b. 1965

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)
FormalDear Mckenney,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name McKenney mean, and where does it come from?
A surname from Scottish Gaelic. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Which countries have the most people with the surname McKenney?
In the United States, the national register counted about 7.3 thousand people named McKenney, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McKenney. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and North Korea; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name McKenney?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,265 people named McKenney in 2010, about 1 in 46 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about McKenney?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mckenney

The 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, “McKenney”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how McKenney parses inside a full name →