McKinlay
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Scottish Gaelic Mac Fionnlaigh, ‘son of Fionnlaoch’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/məˈkɪnli/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
McKinlay is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 26K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 36K
- CACanada≈1 in 62K
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 Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 211 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 24K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,800 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From Scottish Gaelic Mac Fionnlaigh, ‘son of Fionnlaoch’.
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)McKinlay 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | McKinlay | 177 |
| AU Australia | ≈980 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | McKinlay | 121 |
| US United States | 769 | 1 in 433K | 960 | McKinlay | 211 |
| CA Canada | ≈610 est. | ≈1 in 62K | — | McKinlay | 117 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | McKinlay | 74 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 376K | — | McKinlay | 14 |
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. 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)McKinlay 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.
In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 McKinlayb. 1819AUScottish-born Australian explorer
- Adeline McKinlayb. 1860USUS tennis player
- Duncan E. McKinlayb. 1862USAmerican politician (1862-1914)
- Adam McKinlayb. 1887GBBritish politician (1887-1950)
- Donald McKinlayb. 1891GBScottish footballer (1891-1959)
- Arthur Frank McKinlayb. 1932USAmerican rower
- John McKinlayb. 1932USAmerican rower
- Tosh McKinlayb. 1964GBScottish footballer (born 1964)
- Billy McKinlayb. 1969GBScottish football manager and former player
- Meg McKinlayAUAustralian children's 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)16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 960 | #26,730 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 769 | #30,390 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 691 | #31,621 |
| 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 McKinlay mean, and where does it come from?
- From Scottish Gaelic Mac Fionnlaigh, ‘son of Fionnlaoch’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McKinlay?
- In English /məˈkɪnli/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does McKinlay have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 thousand people named McKinlay in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mckinlay.
- How common is the name McKinlay?
- In the United States, the national register counted 769 people named McKinlay in 2010, about 1 in 433 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McKinlay?
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/mckinlayThe 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, “McKinlay”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.