McGinley
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic Mag Fhionnghaile, ‘son of Fionnghal’, a personal name meaning literally ‘fair valour’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məˈɡɪnɫi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McGinley is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 26K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 40K
- USUnited States1 in 49K
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)
- Sources
- 350 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Irish Gaelic Mag Fhionnghaile, ‘son of Fionnghal’, a personal name meaning literally ‘fair valour’.
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)
McGinley 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 | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 138K | — | McGinley | 3 |
| US United States | — | 6,851 | 1 in 49K | 6.9K | McGinley | 350 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 26K | listed | McGinley | 164 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 147K | — | McGinley | 4 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | McGinley | 84 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | McGinley | 99 |
| IE Ireland | #626 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | McGinley | 84 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | McGinley | 11 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | McGinley | 2 |
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 hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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)
McGinley 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.
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mag Fhlonnghalle, a patronymic from the personal name Fionnghal, composed of the elements/onn ‘fair’ + gal ‘valor’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Fhionnghaile, patr. from the personal name Fionnghal, composed of the elementsfair + gal valour. According McGrain see Rainey to Black it has no connection with McKinley.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)
- Phyllis McGinleyb. 1905USAmerican writer and poet (1905–1978)
- Seán McGinleyb. 1956IEIrish actor
- Ted McGinleyb. 1958USAmerican actor (born 1958)
- John C. McGinleyb. 1959USAmerican actor
- John McGinleyb. 1959GBEnglish footballer
- Paul McGinleyb. 1966IEIrish professional golfer
- Ryan McGinleyb. 1977USphotographer (born 1977)
- Philip McGinleyb. 1981GBBritish actor
- Nathan McGinleyb. 1996GBEnglish association football player (born 1996)
- Bill McGinleyb. 2000USAmerican government official
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 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.9K | #5,112 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.6K | #5,140 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.4K | #5,000 |
| 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
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 McGinley mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic Mag Fhionnghaile, ‘son of Fionnghal’, a personal name meaning literally ‘fair valour’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McGinley?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈɡɪnɫi/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McGinley have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named McGinley in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcginley.
- How common is the name McGinley?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,851 people named McGinley in 2010, about 1 in 49 thousand residents.
- How common is McGinley compared with other names?
- In Ireland, McGinley is the 626th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McGinley?
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/mcginleyThe 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, “McGinley” — the 626th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.