McNaughton
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Gaelic ‘son of Neachtan’, a name related to the ancient Irish water god Neptunus
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məkˈnɔtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McNaughton is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 23K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 32K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 357 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
4,287 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Gaelic ‘son of Neachtan’, a name related to the ancient Irish water god Neptunus
Sources 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)
McNaughton 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 4,287 | 1 in 78K | 4.3K | McNaughton | 357 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | McNaughton | 162 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | McNaughton | 152 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | McNaughton | 140 |
| EG Egypt | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 151K | — | McNaughton | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | McNaughton | 78 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | McNaughton | 10 |
4,287 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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)
McNaughton 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Neachtain, a patronymic from the personal name Neachtan, a name of the god of water in Irish mythology. This is cognate with Latin Neptunus ‘Neptune’, the Roman sea-god.
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)
- Gus McNaughtonb. 1881GBactor (1881-1969)
- Andrew McNaughtonb. 1887CACanadian scientist, diplomat, and general (1887-1966)
- Duncan McNaughtonb. 1910CAathletics competitor (1910-1998)
- John T. McNaughtonb. 1921USAmerican government official (1921-1967)
- Robert McNaughtonb. 1924USAmerican mathematician and computer scientist (1924-2014)
- William John McNaughtonb. 1926USCatholic bishop
- John McNaughtonb. 1950USAmerican film and television director
- Janet McNaughtonb. 1953CACanadian writer
- Chronixxb. 1992JMnot in their usual nameJamaican singer and songwriter
- Kiel McNaughtonNZNew Zealand director
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 14 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.3K | #7,744 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.3K | #7,529 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.1K | #7,471 |
| 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
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 McNaughton mean, and where does it come from?
- from Gaelic ‘son of Neachtan’, a name related to the ancient Irish water god Neptunus Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McNaughton?
- A machine transcription gives /məkˈnɔtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McNaughton have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.3 thousand people named McNaughton, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcnaughton.
- How common is the name McNaughton?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,287 people named McNaughton in 2010, about 1 in 78 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McNaughton?
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/mcnaughtonThe 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, “McNaughton”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.