Tiernan

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Transferred use of the Irish surname, Gaelic O Tighearndin ‘descendant of Tighearnan’

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Tiernan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 53K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 64K
  • USUnited States1 in 130K

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈13,000 people, est.

Sources
292 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Transferred use of the Irish surname, Gaelic O Tighearndin ‘descendant of Tighearnan’. The latter is a diminutive of tighearna ‘lord’.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Tiernan 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.

Where Tiernan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈13,000 est.≈1 in 106K—Tiernan3
US United States—2,5521 in 130K2.6KTiernan292
GB United Kingdom—≈1,000 est.≈1 in 64K1.1KTiernan117
AU Australia—≈480 est.≈1 in 53K1Tiernan85
IE Ireland#867≈440 est.≈1 in 12K—Tiernan77
CA Canada—≈300 est.≈1 in 127K1Tiernan48

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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Tiernan is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Panama

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Tiernán

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Tiernán

43 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Tiernan 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, Irish Gaelic; descendant of a lord

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Irish: Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Ti(ghe)arnán, originally a byname representing a diminutive form of tighearna lord.

    as a word

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)

18001850190019502000Frances Tiernan, b. 1846Mike Tiernan, b. 1867Robert Tiernan, b. 1929Bob Tiernan, b. 1955Andrew Tiernan, b. 1965Greg Tiernan, b. 1965Sonja Tiernan, b. 1968Tommy Tiernan, b. 1969Patrick Tiernan, b. 1994

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 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Tiernan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.6K#12,204
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#11,981
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.4K#12,570
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)20021.1K#6,188
US United Stateswru 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 Tiernan mean?
Recorded meaning: Transferred use of the Irish surname, Gaelic O Tighearndin ‘descendant of Tighearnan’.
Where does the name Tiernan come from?
Transferred use of the Irish surname, Gaelic O Tighearndin ‘descendant of Tighearnan’. The latter is a diminutive of tighearna ‘lord’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
How common is the name Tiernan?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,552 people named Tiernan in 2010, about 1 in 130 thousand residents.
How common is Tiernan compared with other names?
In Ireland, Tiernan is the 867th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
In which country does Tiernan have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Tiernan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled tiernan.

What do you want to know about Tiernan?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tiernan

The 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, “Tiernan” — the 867th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Tiernan parses inside a full name →