Metcalfe
surname · Latin script
Meaning: perhaps herdsman or slaughterer, or from a nickname for a plump person, from Middle English metecalf 'calf being fattened up for slaughter' (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Metcalfe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United Kingdom than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 7.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 15Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United Kingdom (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 365 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,200 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)perhaps herdsman or slaughterer, or from a nickname for a plump person, from Middle English metecalf 'calf being fattened up for slaughter'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where the surname Metcalfe is found
(measured from records)Metcalfe 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #594 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Metcalfe | 265 |
| US United States | — | 4,725 | 1 in 70K | 4.8K | Metcalfe | 365 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Metcalfe | 153 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Metcalfe | 152 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | Metcalfe | 34 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Metcalfe | 82 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Metcalfe | 47 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)Metcalfe 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.
In English, A surname, either characteristical or occupational in origin.
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)- Charles Metcalfe, 1st Baron Metcalfeb. 1785INBritish colonial governor (1785-1846)
- Robert Metcalfeb. 1946USAmerican electrical engineer
- Jesse Metcalfeb. 1978USAmerican actor
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)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Metcalfe mean, and where does it come from?
- perhaps herdsman or slaughterer, or from a nickname for a plump person, from Middle English metecalf 'calf being fattened up for slaughter' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Metcalfe?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.2 thousand people named Metcalfe in the United Kingdom, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled metcalfe. After it come United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Metcalfe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,725 people named Metcalfe in 2010, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.
- How common is Metcalfe compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Metcalfe is the 594th most common surname of 1,272,424 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Metcalfe?
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/metcalfeThe 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, “Metcalfe” — the 594th most common surname in the United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.