O'Donovan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: O Donnabhain, from donn ‘brown’ and dubhann ‘black’; noble Munster sept, chieftains in Carbery; territory along the River Maigue, later in Cork
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
O'Donovan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 6.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 55K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 89K
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)
- Sources
- 196 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.9K (inferred from the name graph)
1,345 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Odonovan in US United States, EG Egypt.
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)
O Donnabhain, from donn ‘brown’ and dubhann ‘black’; noble Munster sept, chieftains in Carbery; territory along the River Maigue, later in Cork
Sources 1
- Irish family names
Where in the world(measured from records)
O'Donovan 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 | — | 1,345 | 1 in 247K | 1.5K | Odonovan | 196 |
| IE Ireland | #225 | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | — | O'Donovan | 90 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈740 est. | ≈1 in 89K | 3K | O'Donovan | 139 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 55K | — | O'Donovan | 80 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 344K | — | Odonovan | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 231K | — | O'Donovan | 26 |
1,345 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- John O'Donovanb. 1806IEnot in their usual nameIrish language scholar (1806–1861)
- Edwin O'Donovanb. 1914USnot in their usual nameart director (1914-2000)
- Leo J. O'Donovanb. 1934USnot in their usual nameAmerican Jesuit academic administrator and theologian
- Oliver O'Donovanb. 1945GBnot in their usual nameBritish theologian
- Denis O'Donovanb. 1955IEnot in their usual nameIrish politician
- Aoife O'Donovanb. 1982USnot in their usual nameIrish-American singer-songwriter
- Roy O'Donovanb. 1985IEnot in their usual nameIrish footballer
- Róisín O'Donovanb. 1989IEnot in their usual nameIrish actress and film director (1989)
- Gary O'Donovanb. 1992IEnot in their usual nameIrish rower
- Paul O'Donovanb. 1994IEnot in their usual nameIrish rower
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 11 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3K | #2,572 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 O'Donovan mean, and where does it come from?
- O Donnabhain, from donn ‘brown’ and dubhann ‘black’; noble Munster sept, chieftains in Carbery; territory along the River Maigue, later in Cork Recorded by Irish family names.
- In which country does O'Donovan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.3 thousand people named O'Donovan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled odonovan.
- How common is the name O'Donovan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,345 people named O'Donovan in 2010, about 1 in 247 thousand residents.
- How common is O'Donovan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, O'Donovan is the 225th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about O'Donovan?
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/o'donovanThe 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, “O'Donovan” — the 225th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.