Duggan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Dubhagáin, descendant of Dubhagán, literally ‘little little dark-haired or dark-complexioned person’; (ii) from the Welsh name Cadwgan
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈdəɡən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Duggan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 2.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 6.8K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 9.5K
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
- 404 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈56,000 people, est.
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)
(i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Dubhagáin, descendant of Dubhagán, literally ‘little little dark-haired or dark-complexioned person’; (ii) from the Welsh name Cadwgan.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Duggan 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 | — | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Duggan | 7 |
| US United States | — | 12,237 | 1 in 27K | 12K | Duggan | 404 |
| GB United Kingdom | #881 | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 9.5K | listed | Duggan | 225 |
| AU Australia | #629 | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Duggan | 189 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Duggan | 172 |
| IE Ireland | #189 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Duggan | 142 |
| NZ New Zealand | #976 | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Duggan | 74 |
| GY Guyana | — | 71 | 1 in 11K | 71 | — | 3 |
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; the welsh-surnames-morgan-1985 register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Duggan 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, O Dubhagain 'black'; sept of Cork, Galway, Donegal and Tipperary
as a nameIrish family names
In English, A Manx name for O’Dubhagáin; first attested Ó Dubhagain 1372
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In Swedish, definite singular of dugga
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Tommy Dugganb. 1909IEBritish actor (1909-1998)
- Gerry Dugganb. 1910AUAustralian actor
- Tom Dugganb. 1915USAmerican commentator (1915–1969)
- Andrew Dugganb. 1923USactor (1923–1988)
- Jim Dugganb. 1954USAmerican professional wrestler
- Mike Dugganb. 1958USMayor of Detroit (born 1958)
- Simon Dugganb. 1959NZNew Zealand cinematographer
- Gerry Dugganb. 1973USAmerican comics writer
- Toni Dugganb. 1991GBEnglish association football player (born 1991)
- Madeline Dugganb. 1994GBEnglish actress
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 28 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #2,928 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,773 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,960 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 71 | #554 |
| GB United Kingdom | Welsh Surnames (Morgan & Morgan, 1985) | — | — | — |
| 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Duggan mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) From Irish Gaelic Ó Dubhagáin, descendant of Dubhagán, literally ‘little little dark-haired or dark-complexioned person’; (ii) from the Welsh name Cadwgan. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Duggan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdəɡən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Duggan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 56 thousand people named Duggan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled duggan.
- How common is the name Duggan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,237 people named Duggan in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
- How common is Duggan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Duggan is the 189th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Duggan?
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/dugganThe 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, “Duggan” — the 189th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.