Rooney
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From Irish Gaelic Ó Ruanaidh, 'descendant of Ruanaidh', a nickname meaning 'champion'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹuːni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rooney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 7.2K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 9.1K
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
- 435 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
16,823 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 Ó Ruanaidh, 'descendant of Ruanaidh', a nickname meaning 'champion'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Rooney, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rooney 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 | — | 16,823 | 1 in 20K | 17K | Rooney | 435 |
| GB United Kingdom | #637 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | 7 | Rooney | 216 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Rooney | 25 |
| AU Australia | #848 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | 1 | Rooney | 157 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2 | Rooney | 161 |
| IE Ireland | #200 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | Rooney | 116 |
| NZ New Zealand | #908 | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Rooney | 82 |
| JM Jamaica | #431 | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Rooney | 4 |
16,823 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); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Rooney 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.
‘descendant of Ruanaidh’, a byname meaning ‘Champion’. Vars.: O’Rownoe, {0’)Roney, Rowney. Roop see Roper Roos see Ross
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
cendant of Ruanaidh’, a byname meaning ‘Champion’. Vars.: O’Rownoe, (O’)Roney, Rowney.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, Mickey, US actor; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, The son of Ronald
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)
- Mickey Rooneyb. 1920USAmerican actor (1920–2014)
- Darrell Rooneyb. 1959CACanadian animator, storyboard artist, and director
- Ted Rooneyb. 1960USAmerican actor
- Tom Rooneyb. 1970USAmerican politician from Florida
- Sean Rooneyb. 1982USvolleyball player
- Christy Carlson Romanob. 1984USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1984)
- Wayne Rooneyb. 1985GBEnglish footballer and manager
- Martyn Rooneyb. 1987GBathletics competitor
- Sharon Rooneyb. 1988GBScottish actress
- Sally Rooneyb. 1991IEIrish author
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 54 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,156 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,167 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,450 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Rooney mean, and where does it come from?
- From Irish Gaelic Ó Ruanaidh, 'descendant of Ruanaidh', a nickname meaning 'champion'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Rooney?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹuːni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rooney have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Rooney, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rooney.
- How common is the name Rooney?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,823 people named Rooney in 2010, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
- How common is Rooney compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Rooney is the 200th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rooney?
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/rooneyThe 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, “Rooney” — the 200th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.