Starkey
surname · Latin script
Meaning: diminutive of STARK; first attested Richard Starky 1260 AssCh, Lawrence Starky 1446 AD v (Ch)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Starkey is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 15K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 15Kfew records
- AUAustralia≈1 in 16K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 394 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
15,004 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)diminutive of STARK; first attested Richard Starky 1260 AssCh, Lawrence Starky 1446 AD v (Ch)
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world
(measured from records)Starkey 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 | — | 15,004 | 1 in 22K | 15K | Starkey | 394 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 5.2K | Starkey | 184 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Starkey | 137 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Starkey | 86 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈990 est. | ≈1 in 65K | — | Starkey | 34 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Starkey | 17 |
| KP North Korea | #964 | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Starkey | 1 |
15,004 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)Starkey is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, little Stark.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In Irish, This well-known Dublin name (of English adjectival origin meaning stiff) is in Ireland since the fourteenth century
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
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)- George Starkeyb. 1628BMEarly Colonial American alchemist
- Dewey Starkeyb. 1898USfilm director (1898-1974)
- Ringo Starrb. 1940GBnot in their usual nameBritish musician, drummer for the Beatles (born 1940)
- David Starkeyb. 1945GBBritish constitutional historian
- Maureen Starkey Tigrettb. 1946GBwife of Ringo Starr (1946–1994)
- Zak Starkeyb. 1965GBEnglish drummer
- Lee Starkeyb. 1970GBfashion designer
- Dan Starkeyb. 1977GBBritish actor
- Drew Starkeyb. 1993USAmerican actor
- Steve Starkeyb. 2000USAmerican film producer
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)26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,415 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,297 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,511 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5.2K | #1,538 |
| 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 Starkey mean, and where does it come from?
- diminutive of STARK; first attested Richard Starky 1260 AssCh, Lawrence Starky 1446 AD v (Ch) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Starkey have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Starkey, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled starkey.
- How common is the name Starkey?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,004 people named Starkey in 2010, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
- How common is Starkey compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Starkey is the 964th most common surname of 2,439 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Starkey?
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/starkeyThe 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, “Starkey” — the 964th most common surname in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.