Meiklejohn
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Scottish distinguishing name for the larger or elder of two men called John
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Meiklejohn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Australia than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 49Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 56K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 150K
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)
- Record sources
- 182 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 49K (inferred from the name graph)
≈480 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)Scottish distinguishing name for the larger or elder of two men called John
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world
(measured from records)Meiklejohn 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 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Meiklejohn | 94 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Meiklejohn | 93 |
| US United States | 413 | 1 in 805K | 413 | Meiklejohn | 182 |
| CA Canada | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 199K | — | Meiklejohn | 63 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 517K | — | Meiklejohn | 13 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Meiklejohn | 58 |
| SG Singapore | ≈26 est. | ≈1 in 236K | — | Meiklejohn | 4 |
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)Meiklejohn is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
distinguishing name for the largest or eldest (see Mickle) of two or more bearers of the personal name John.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Alexander, US educator
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Big John; first attested Mekle John Burne 1495 Black.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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 Meiklejohnb. 1836GBMeiklejohn, John Miller Dow (1836-1920), writer of school books
- George de Rue Meiklejohnb. 1857USAmerican politician (1857-1929)
- Matthew Fontaine Maury Meiklejohnb. 1870GBScottish military officer (1870–1913); recipient of the Victoria Cross
- Alexander Meiklejohnb. 1872USBritish philosopher (1872-1964)
- Roderick Sinclair Meiklejohnb. 1876civil servant
- William Meiklejohnb. 1903USAmerican talent agent
- Ray Meiklejohnb. 1935CAMember of Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan
- Shaun Meiklejohnb. 1961ZASouth African distance runner
- James Meiklejohnb. 1984Australian rules footballer
- Sarah MeiklejohnUSAmerican computer scientist
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 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 413 | #50,564 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 406 | #48,776 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 385 | #57,177 |
| 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 Meiklejohn mean, and where does it come from?
- Scottish distinguishing name for the larger or elder of two men called John Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Meiklejohn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 484 people named Meiklejohn in Australia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled meiklejohn.
- How common is the name Meiklejohn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 413 people named Meiklejohn in 2010, about 1 in 805 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Meiklejohn?
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/meiklejohnThe 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, “Meiklejohn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.