Quayle
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a quail, e.g
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Quayle is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- AUAustralia
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a quail, e.g. in plumpness, timorousness, or lecherousness.
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)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Quayle 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, Manx form of MACFAIL; first attested MacFayle 1511
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A surname from Manx.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, James Danforth, US vice president
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In enm, quail (game bird)
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)
- John Quayleb. 1868USAmerican politician (1868-1930)
- James Quayleb. 1890GBEnglish footballer (1890-1936)
- Anthony Quayleb. 1913GBBritish actor (1913–1989)
- Don Quayleb. 1930USAmerican businessman (1930–2015)
- Anna Quayleb. 1932GBEnglish actress (1932-2019)
- Fred Quayleb. 1936USAmerican politician (1936–2018)
- Dan Quayleb. 1947USvice president of the United States from 1989 to 1993
- Marilyn Quayleb. 1949USSecond Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993
- Ben Quayleb. 1976USAmerican politician
- Mac QuayleUSAmerican music composer
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.7K | #2,870 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.5K | #18,098 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.5K | #17,652 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4K | #18,992 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 22 | #80,591 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 22 | #78,058 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3 | #154,370 |
| 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
- Where does the name Quayle come from?
- from a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a quail, e.g. in plumpness, timorousness, or lecherousness. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What does the name Quayle mean?
- Recorded meaning: from a medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a quail, e.g.
- In which country does Quayle have the most bearers?
- Quayle is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Quayle?
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/quayleThe 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, “Quayle”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.