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.
- 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)
- Sources
- 294 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,200 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU Australia | #731 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | McLennan | 167 |
| US United States | — | 2,425 | 1 in 137K | 2.4K | McLennan | 294 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | McLennan | 166 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | McLennan | 150 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 164K | — | McLennan | 28 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | McLennan | 87 |
| BZ Belize | #98 | ≈33 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | McLennan | 1 |
| GY Guyana | — | 18 | 1 in 42K | 18 | — | 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- John Ferguson McLennanb. 1827GBBritish lawyer and ethnologist (1827–1881)
- John Cunningham McLennanb. 1867GBCanadian physicist (1867–1935)
- Gordon McLennanb. 1924GBBritish politician (1924–2011)
- Danny McLennanb. 1925GBScottish footballer and manager (1925-2004)
- Margo McLennanb. 1938GBAustralian actress (1938-2004)
- Don McLennanb. 1950AUAustralian filmmaker
- Grant McLennanb. 1958AUAustralian singer (1958–2006)
- Jamie McLennanb. 1971CACanadian ice hockey player
- Rodney McLennanb. 1979AUactor
- Connor McLennanb. 1999GBassociation football player (born 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 17 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.4K | #12,729 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,830 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.3K | #12,590 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 18 | #607 |
| 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 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?
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/mclennanThe 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.