McWhirter
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Gaelic Mac An Chruiteir, 'son of the harpist or fiddler'
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
McWhirter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 38K(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 48Kfew records
- CACanada≈1 in 53K
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)
- Record sources
- 295 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)
2,846 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From Gaelic Mac An Chruiteir, 'son of the harpist or fiddler'.
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)McWhirter 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 | 2,846 | 1 in 117K | 2.8K | McWhirter | 295 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 67K | — | McWhirter | 126 |
| CA Canada | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | McWhirter | 110 |
| AU Australia | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | McWhirter | 103 |
| PH Philippines | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 308K | — | McWhirter | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | McWhirter | 23 |
2,846 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)McWhirter 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 an Chruiteir ‘son of the harpist or fiddler’, from Gaelic cruitear ‘harpist’, ‘fiddler’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)- Martha McWhirterb. 1827USAmerican commune founder
- A. McWhirterb. 1872GBEnglish footballer (1872-1932)
- Douglas McWhirterb. 1886GBEnglish football player (1886-1966)
- Norris McWhirterb. 1925GBBritish writer, political activist and television presenter (1925—2004)
- Ross McWhirterb. 1925GBwriter, political activist, television presenter (1925-1975)
- J. Jeffries McWhirterb. 1938clinical psychologist and educator (1938- )
- George McWhirterb. 1939CACanadian poet
- Julie McWhirterb. 1947USAmerican actress
- David McWhirtertelevision director
- John McWhirterGBBritish mathematician
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)14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,134 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.8K | #10,524 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.7K | #11,264 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 McWhirter mean, and where does it come from?
- From Gaelic Mac An Chruiteir, 'son of the harpist or fiddler'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does McWhirter have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named McWhirter, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcwhirter.
- How common is the name McWhirter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,846 people named McWhirter in 2010, about 1 in 117 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McWhirter?
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/mcwhirterThe 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, “McWhirter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.