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'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Metcalfe is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 7.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 14K
- CACanada≈1 in 21K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 365 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,900 people, est.
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'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 157K | — | Metcalfe | 8 |
| GB United Kingdom | #594 | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Metcalfe | 265 |
| US United States | — | 4,725 | 1 in 70K | 4.8K | Metcalfe | 365 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Metcalfe | 152 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Metcalfe | 153 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Metcalfe | 82 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | 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)
- Thomas Metcalfeb. 1780USAmerican politician (1780–1855)
- Charles Metcalfe, 1st Baron Metcalfeb. 1785INBritish colonial governor (1785-1846)
- Ralph Metcalfeb. 1910USAmerican athlete and politician (1910–1978)
- Adrian Metcalfeb. 1942GBBritish sprinter (1942–2021)
- Robert Metcalfeb. 1946USAmerican electrical engineer
- Stephen Metcalfeb. 1966GBBritish politician (born 1966)
- Jesse Metcalfeb. 1978USAmerican actor
- Jennifer Metcalfeb. 1983GBEnglish actress
- Connor Metcalfeb. 1999AUAustralian soccer player (born 1999)
- Mel Metcalfeb. 2000USSound engineer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 25 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.8K | #6,809 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.7K | #7,086 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.5K | #6,935 |
| 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 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].
- In which country does Metcalfe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.9 thousand people named Metcalfe in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled metcalfe.
- 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 United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.