Morrissey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Muirgheas, descendant of Muirgheasa, a personal name perhaps meaning ‘sea-taboo’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Morrissey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 25K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 143K
- SESweden1 in 309K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 20 (measured from records)
- 1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
13,564 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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 Irish Gaelic Ó Muirgheas, descendant of Muirgheasa, a personal name perhaps meaning ‘sea-taboo’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Morrissey 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 | 13,564 | 1 in 25K | 14K | Morrissey | 20 |
| ES Spain | 63 | 1 in 794K | 63 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 39 | 1 in 143K | 39 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 33 | 1 in 309K | 33 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 27 | 1 in 311K | 27 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 14 | 1 in 391K | 14 | — | — |
13,564 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Morrissey 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.
In English, O Muirgheasa ‘sea choice’; sept of Sligo, Waterford, Limerick and Cork
as a nameIrish family names
cendant of Muirgheasa’, a personal name apparently derived from the elements muir sea + geas taboo, prohibi¬ tion. Vars.: O’Morrissey, O’Murrissa, O’Morisa, Mor(r)issy, Morrisey. Dims.: O’Murghesan, O’Morrisane (Gael. O Muirgheasain).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In Irish, This name can be Irish Ó Muirgheasa ( muir, sea— geas, action) or Norman de Marisco. The complications arising in connection with it and with Morrison are discussed in IF and MIF
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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 Morrisseyb. 1831USAmerican boxer and politician (1831-1878)
- Betty Morrisseyb. 1908USAmerican actress (1908–1944)
- Paul Morrisseyb. 1938USAmerican film director (1938–2024)
- Mary Morrisseyb. 1949USAmerican writer (1949-)
- Morrisseyb. 1959GBBritish singer and songwriter
- Neil Morrisseyb. 1962GBBritish actor
- David Morrisseyb. 1964GBEnglish actor
- Bill Morrisseyb. 1986USAmerican professional wrestler and actor
- Flo Morrisseyb. 1994GBEnglish recording artist; singer-songwriter
- Josh Morrisseyb. 1995CACanadian ice hockey player
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 30 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,658 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,642 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,496 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 63 | #38,143 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 63 | #37,783 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 39 | #28,341 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 33 | #17,545 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 27 | #29,501 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 14 | #49,007 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Morrissey mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Ó Muirgheas, descendant of Muirgheasa, a personal name perhaps meaning ‘sea-taboo’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Morrissey?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,564 people named Morrissey in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- In which country does Morrissey have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Morrissey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled morrissey.
- Where is Morrissey most common?
- Morrissey is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 25 thousand people carrying it.
What do you want to know about Morrissey?
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/morrisseyThe 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, “Morrissey”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.