McKibben

surname · Latin script

Meaning: (i) From Irish Gaelic, ‘son of Fibin’, a pet-form of Philip; (ii) different form of McGibbon (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

McKibben is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 4,958 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.

  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 54Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • IEIreland≈1 in 59Kfew records
  • USUnited States1 in 67K

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.

United States (measured from records)

4,958 people, 2010

Record sources
312 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 54K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

(i) From Irish Gaelic, ‘son of Fibin’, a pet-form of Philip; (ii) different form of McGibbon.

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 the surname McKibben is found

(measured from records)

McKibben 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 McKibben is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States4,9581 in 67K5KMcKibben312
GB United Kingdom≈680 est.≈1 in 101K—McKibben87
CA Canada≈400 est.≈1 in 105K—McKibben45
AU Australia≈330 est.≈1 in 82K—McKibben45
NZ New Zealand≈98 est.≈1 in 54K—McKibben10
IE Ireland≈92 est.≈1 in 59K—McKibben14

4,958 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling mckibben. 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)

McKibben is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, 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 Fhibm, a patronymic from Fibin, a pet form of Philip.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giobuin (see McGibbon).

    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)
194019501960Howard D. McKibben, b. 1940Sherry McKibben, b. 1944Bill McKibben, b. 1960

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 Mckibben,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

9 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.

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

Frequently asked questions

What does the name McKibben mean, and where does it come from?
(i) From Irish Gaelic, ‘son of Fibin’, a pet-form of Philip; (ii) different form of McGibbon. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
Which countries have the most people with the surname McKibben?
In the United States, the national register counted about 5.0 thousand people named McKibben, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McKibben. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name McKibben?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,958 people named McKibben in 2010, about 1 in 67 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about McKibben?

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

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, “McKibben” — ranked 6719th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how McKibben parses inside a full name →