Quigley
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Quigley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from Irish Gaelic O Coigligh, 'descendant of Coigleach', probably a nickname meaning 'untidy person'.
- IEIreland≈1 in 4K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 10K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 12K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 432 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.0K (inferred from the name graph)
17,121 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)
from Irish Gaelic O Coigligh, 'descendant of Coigleach', probably a nickname meaning 'untidy person'.
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)
Quigley 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 | — | 17,121 | 1 in 19K | 17K | Quigley | 432 |
| GB United Kingdom | #953 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 10K | 5.1K | Quigley | 210 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Quigley | 158 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Quigley | 8 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Quigley | 12 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Quigley | 165 |
| IE Ireland | #279 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4K | — | Quigley | 110 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Quigley | 43 |
17,121 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). 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)
Quigley 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 Coigligh ‘untidy hair’; sept in Mayo, Donegal, Derry, Sligo and Galway
as a nameIrish family names
In English, Irish Gaelic; a spinning distaff.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Gaelic A Spinning Distaff
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Charles Quigleyb. 1906USAmerican actor (1906-1964)
- Carroll Quigleyb. 1910USAmerican historian (1910–1977)
- Godfrey Quigleyb. 1923IEIrish actor (1923-1994)
- Joan Quigleyb. 1927USAmerican astrologer
- Juanita Quigleyb. 1931USAmerican actress (1931-2017)
- Jane Alexanderb. 1939USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1939)
- Michael Quigleyb. 1958USAmerican politician (born 1958)
- Linnea Quigleyb. 1958USAmerican actress
- Maggie Qb. 1979USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Allie Quigleyb. 1986USAmerican basketball 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 29 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,113 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 17K | #1,973 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,154 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5.1K | #1,551 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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 Quigley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic O Coigligh, 'descendant of Coigleach', probably a nickname meaning 'untidy person'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Quigley have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Quigley, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled quigley.
- How common is the name Quigley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,121 people named Quigley in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
- How common is Quigley compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Quigley is the 279th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Quigley?
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/quigleyThe same 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), 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, “Quigley” — the 279th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.