Townley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Towneley (Lancashire), or ‘dweller by the farm clearing’; first attested Richard de Tunleie 1214 FFSf
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Townley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 32K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 46K
- USUnited States1 in 84K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 319 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,400 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, 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 Towneley (Lancashire), or ‘dweller by the farm clearing’; first attested Richard de Tunleie 1214 FFSf
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Townley 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Townley | 7 |
| US United States | — | 3,947 | 1 in 84K | 3.9K | Townley | 319 |
| KP North Korea | #701 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Townley | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 3K | Townley | 151 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 328K | — | Townley | 5 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Townley | 99 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Townley | 35 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈99 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Townley | 14 |
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)
Townley 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, English surname; from a town meadow/clearing
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, Old English: from the town meadow
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Irish, A toponymic from Lancashire on record in Cos. Louth, Ca van and Dublin since the sixteenth century. The best known family of that name is that of Townley Hall, near Drogheda
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)
- James Townleyb. 1714GBEnglish clergyman and dramatist (1714-1778)
- Charles Townleyb. 1737FREnglish art collector and antiquarian (1737–1805)
- Mary Townleyb. 1753GBarchitect
- Walter Beaupré Townleyb. 1863GBBritish ambassador (1863-1945)
- William Townleyb. 1866GBEnglish football player and manager (1866 – 1950)
- A. C. Townleyb. 1880USAmerican politician (1880–1959)
- Jack Townleyb. 1897USAmerican screenwriter
- Jimmy Townleyb. 1902GBEnglish footballer (1902-1983)
- Michael Townleyb. 1942USAmerican murderer
- Sophie Kinsellab. 1969GBnot in their usual nameBritish writer (1969–2025)
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 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,386 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.9K | #7,826 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.8K | #8,397 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 3K | #2,557 |
| 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 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 Townley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Towneley (Lancashire), or ‘dweller by the farm clearing’; first attested Richard de Tunleie 1214 FFSf Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Townley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.4 thousand people named Townley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled townley.
- How common is the name Townley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,947 people named Townley in 2010, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
- How common is Townley compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Townley is the 701st most common surname of 2,439 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Townley?
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/townleyThe 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, “Townley” — the 701st most common surname in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.