Macleod
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Norse-Gaelic MacLeòid, ‘son of Leod’ from Old Norse ljotr ‘ugly’ + probable ulf ‘wolf’; progenitor Tormod/Norman noted in records
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məklaʊd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Macleod is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- JMJamaica≈1 in 3Kas McLeod
- AUAustralia≈1 in 3.1Kas McLeod
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Macleod itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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
- 484 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 named McLeod, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled McLeod in US United States, CA Canada, AU Australia and 4 more.
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)
Norse-Gaelic MacLeòid, ‘son of Leod’ from Old Norse ljotr ‘ugly’ + probable ulf ‘wolf’; progenitor Tormod/Norman noted in records.
Sources 1
- Scottish Surnames
Where in the world(measured from records)
Macleod 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 | — | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | McLeod | 11 |
| US United States | #673 | 30,769as McLeod | 1 in 11K | 31K | McLeod | 484 |
| GB United Kingdom | #245 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | listed | Macleod | 248 |
| CA Canada | #113 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 1 | McLeod | 245 |
| AU Australia | #197 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | — | McLeod | 219 |
| NZ New Zealand | #138 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | McLeod | 125 |
| JM Jamaica | #115 | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | McLeod | 23 |
| NO Norway | — | 114 | 1 in 48K | 114 | McLeod | 17 |
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 bbc-pronouncing-dictionary-british-names register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Macleod is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from Gaelic MacLeòid ‘son of Leòd’ (ON Liótr ‘ugly’); first attested Gillandres MacLeod 1227 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A surname from Irish, A surname from Scottish Gaelic, A surname from Cree
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, J. J. R., Scottish physiologist (Nobel
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Croatian, kanadski fiziolog, za otkriće inzulina Nobelova nagrada 1923 (s F. G. Bantingom)
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- John James Rickard Macleodb. 1876GBNobel prize-winning Scottish physician and physiologist; co-discoverer of insulin
- Colin Munro MacLeodb. 1909CACzech-American biologist
- Mary Anne MacLeod Trumpb. 1912GBMother of Donald Trump (1912–2000)
- Iain Macleodb. 1913GBBritish politician, cabinet minister and contract bridge player (1913-1970)
- Charlotte MacLeodb. 1922CACanadian-American novelist (1922–2005)
- Gavin MacLeodb. 1931USAmerican actor (1931–2021)
- Alistair MacLeodb. 1936CACanadian author and professor of English (1936–2014)
- Ken MacLeodb. 1954GBScottish science fiction writer
- Lewis MacLeodb. 1970GBScottish actor (born 1970)
- Kevin MacLeodb. 1972USAmerican composer and music producer (born 1972)
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 33 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.9K | #4,495 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.8K | #4,393 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.5K | #4,353 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 114 | #13,568 |
| GB United Kingdom | BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Scottish Surnames (Ross, 1994) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- How do you pronounce Macleod?
- A machine transcription gives /məklaʊd/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Macleod mean, and where does it come from?
- Norse-Gaelic MacLeòid, ‘son of Leod’ from Old Norse ljotr ‘ugly’ + probable ulf ‘wolf’; progenitor Tormod/Norman noted in records. Recorded by Scottish Surnames.
- In which country does Macleod have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 161 thousand people named McLeod in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Macleod?
- In Norway, the national register counted 114 people named Macleod, about 1 in 48 thousand residents.
- How common is Macleod compared with other names?
- In Canada, Macleod is the 113th most common surname of 699,524 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Macleod?
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/macleodThe 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, “Macleod” — the 113th most common surname in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.