Mulligan
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Mulligan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Maolagain (see Milligan).
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 12K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 13K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 428 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.6K (inferred from the name graph)
14,590 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
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)
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Maolagain (see Milligan).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mulligan 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 | — | 14,590 | 1 in 23K | 15K | Mulligan | 428 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Mulligan | 191 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Mulligan | 2 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Mulligan | 152 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Mulligan | 162 |
| IE Ireland | #253 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Mulligan | 108 |
| NZ New Zealand | #948 | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Mulligan | 61 |
14,590 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)
Mulligan is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Ellipsis of mulligan stew.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Different form of Milligan.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Richard, US actor
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, O Maolagain; sept of Donegal, Monaghan and Mayo
as a nameIrish family names
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)
- Robert Mulliganb. 1925USAmerican director (1925-2008)
- Gerry Mulliganb. 1927USAmerican jazz musician and composer (1927–1996)
- Richard Mulliganb. 1932USAmerican actor (1932-2000)
- Terry David Mulliganb. 1942CACanadian actor
- Kevin Mulliganb. 1951GBBritish philosopher
- Andy Mulliganb. 1966GBEnglish children's writer
- Dave Mulliganb. 1982NZNew Zealand footballer
- Carey Mulliganb. 1985GBEnglish actress (born 1985)
- Brennan Lee Mulliganb. 1988USAmerican comedian and actor
- Mary Ewing-MulliganUSwine critic
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 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,469 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,495 |
| 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 Mulligan mean, and where does it come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Maolagain (see Milligan). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Mulligan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Mulligan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mulligan.
- How common is the name Mulligan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,590 people named Mulligan in 2010, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Mulligan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Mulligan is the 253rd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mulligan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mulliganThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Mulligan” — the 253rd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.