Cary
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Cary is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from Carey Barton, Castle, Lytes Cary, Cary Fitzpaine, or Babcary (Somerset); first attested Hamo de Kari 1205 Pl (Somerset).
- USUnited States1 in 29K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 30K
- CNChina≈1 in 27K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 476 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)
≈51,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Chary in CA Canada, AU Australia.
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 Carey Barton, Castle, Lytes Cary, Cary Fitzpaine, or Babcary (Somerset); first attested Hamo de Kari 1205 Pl (Somerset)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cary 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 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Cary | 23 |
| US United States | 11,506 | 1 in 29K | 18K | Cary | 476 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 30K | listed | Cary | 141 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 5 | Chary | 150 |
| FR France | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 86K | 74 | — | 5 |
| AU Australia | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 1 | Chary | 104 |
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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the gb-nisra-baby-names-ni register; the ca-statcan-baby-names register; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Cary 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, A surname, a less common spelling of Carey.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
English: transferred use of the surname, which comes from one of the places in Devon or Somerset so called from an old Celtic river name. Cary became popular as a given name in the middle of the 20th century, due to the fame of the film actor Cary Grant (1904–89), who was born in Bristol and made his first theatrical appearances under his original name of Archie Leach. Variant: CAREY .
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)
- Joyce Caryb. 1888GBAnglo-Irish writer (1888-1957)
- Cary Grantb. 1904GBBritish-American actor (1904–1986)
- Cary Odellb. 1910USart director (1910-1988)
- Diana Serra Caryb. 1918USAmerican child film actress and silent film historian (1918–2020)
- Cary Fowlerb. 1949USAmerican agriculturalist (b.1949)
- Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawab. 1950JPJapanese actor (1950-2025)
- Cary Woodsb. 1953USAmerican film producer
- Cassian Elwesb. 1959GBnot in their usual nameBritish film producer and talent agent
- Cary Elwesb. 1962GBBritish actor (born 1962)
- Cary Joji Fukunagab. 1977USAmerican filmmaker
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 58 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 18K | #1,469 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.8K | #1,469 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 30 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2015 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 5 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 1995 | 1 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 1978 | 1 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2024 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2017 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
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 Cary mean, and where does it come from?
- from Carey Barton, Castle, Lytes Cary, Cary Fitzpaine, or Babcary (Somerset); first attested Hamo de Kari 1205 Pl (Somerset) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Cary have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 51 thousand people named Cary in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cary.
- How common is the name Cary?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,506 people named Cary in 2010, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cary?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/caryThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Cary”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.