Priestly
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Priestly is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: person from Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church'.
- USUnited States1 in 648K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 8.3M
- COColombia≈1 in 19M
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
- 20 (measured from records)
- 1 in 648K (inferred from the name graph)
513 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Priestly 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 | 513 | 1 in 648K | 513 | Priestly | 20 |
| ES Spain | 6 | 1 in 8.3M | 6 | — | 2 |
| CO Colombia | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 19M | — | Priestly | 3 |
| AR Argentina | — | — | — | Priestly | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | — | 107 | Priestly | 5 |
| PA Panama | — | — | — | Priestly | 1 |
| PT Portugal | — | — | — | Priestly | 1 |
513 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)
Priestly 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, Of or relating to priests.
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)
- Percy Priestlyb. 1875(1875-1933) 1932/33 Obituary
- Diana M. Priestlyb. 1922CACanadian law librarian
- Tom Priestlyb. 1937CACanadian slavicist
- Debra Priestlyb. 1961USAmerican painter
- Craig Priestlyb. 1987AUAustralian rugby league footballer
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 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 513 | #42,308 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 484 | #42,217 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 454 | #49,914 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 107 | #31,766 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6 | #154,812 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Priestly mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Priestley, a place name meaning 'wood or woodland clearing belonging to the Church' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Priestly have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 513 people named Priestly, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled priestly.
- Where is Priestly most common?
- Priestly is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 648 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Priestly?
- In the United States, the national register counted 513 people named Priestly in 2010, about 1 in 648 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Priestly?
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/priestlyThe 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, “Priestly”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.