McLennan

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Fhinneain, a patronymic from a personal name meaning ‘servant of (Saint) Fionndn', a personal name representng a diminutive of fionn ‘white’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/məˈkɫɛnən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

McLennan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Australia than in any other country. In Belize it is the 98th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CACanada≈1 in 27K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈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). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Australia (inferred from the name graph)

≈3,200 people, est.

Sources
294 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Australia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Fhinneain, a patronymic from a personal name meaning ‘servant of (Saint) Fionndn', a personal name representng a diminutive of fionn ‘white’. There were several early Irish saints of this name, most notably a 7th-century bishop who governed the Church established in Northumbria and evangelized parts of southern England.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

McLennan 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 McLennan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AU Australia#731≈3,200 est.≈1 in 8K—McLennan167
US United States—2,4251 in 137K2.4KMcLennan294
GB United Kingdom—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 44K—McLennan166
CA Canada—≈1,400 est.≈1 in 27K—McLennan150
ZA South Africa—≈340 est.≈1 in 164K—McLennan28
NZ New Zealand—≈320 est.≈1 in 15K—McLennan87
BZ Belize#98≈33 est.≈1 in 12K—McLennan1
GY Guyana—181 in 42K18—1

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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

McLennan is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Mc-Lennan

  • Russian surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Russia

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Макленнан, Maclennan, Maklennan, Мак-Леннан

38 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000John Ferguson McLennan, b. 1827John Cunningham McLennan, b. 1867Gordon McLennan, b. 1924Danny McLennan, b. 1925Margo McLennan, b. 1938Don McLennan, b. 1950Grant McLennan, b. 1958Jamie McLennan, b. 1971Rodney McLennan, b. 1979Connor McLennan, b. 1999

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 Mclennan,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 17 sources across 8 countries.

Official registers attesting McLennan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.4K#12,729
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.3K#12,830
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.3K#12,590
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 2025202518#607
US United Stateswru 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 McLennan mean, and where does it come from?
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Fhinneain, a patronymic from a personal name meaning ‘servant of (Saint) Fionndn', a personal name representng a diminutive of fionn ‘white’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce McLennan?
A machine transcription gives /məˈkɫɛnən/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does McLennan have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 thousand people named McLennan in Australia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mclennan.
How common is the name McLennan?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,425 people named McLennan in 2010, about 1 in 137 thousand residents.
How common is McLennan compared with other names?
In Australia, McLennan is the 731st most common surname of 552,428 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about McLennan?

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

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, “McLennan” — the 731st most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how McLennan parses inside a full name →