McIntosh

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

McIntosh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 80th most common surname. Recorded meaning: from Scottish Gaelic Mac An Toisich, 'son of the leader'.

rarermore common
  • JMJamaica≈1 in 2.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 3.7K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 4.2K

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)

≈200,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
491 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Jamaica, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

McIntoshLatin(measured from records)
แมคอินทอชThai(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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 Scottish Gaelic Mac An Toisich, 'son of the leader'

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)

McIntosh 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.

Where McIntosh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈200,000 est.≈1 in 7K—McIntosh11
US United States#61742,3791 in 7.8K42KMcIntosh491
GB United Kingdom#408≈13,000 est.≈1 in 5KlistedMcIntosh247
CA Canada#305≈7,300 est.≈1 in 5.2K—McIntosh219
AU Australia#290≈6,900 est.≈1 in 3.7K—McIntosh197
JM Jamaica#80≈1,300 est.≈1 in 2.1K—McIntosh30
NZ New Zealand#278≈1,200 est.≈1 in 4.2K—McIntosh115

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. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

McIntosh is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Colombia, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Mc-Intosh, McIñtosh, Mcïntosh

55 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

McIntosh 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.

  • Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Toisich ‘son of the chief’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, J. pers. name; apple; US pi name

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, county, GA

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

17001800190020002100Lachlan McIntosh, b. 1725Peter Tosh, b. 1944Bruce McIntosh, b. 1949Robbie McIntosh, b. 1957Yanna McIntosh, b. 1970Neve McIntosh, b. 1972Troy McIntosh, b. 1973Pollyanna McIntosh, b. 1979Brooke McIntosh, b. 2005Summer McIntosh, b. 2006

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 32 sources across 20 countries.

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 McIntosh mean, and where does it come from?
from Scottish Gaelic Mac An Toisich, 'son of the leader' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does McIntosh have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 200 thousand people named McIntosh in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcintosh.
How common is the name McIntosh?
In the United States, the national register counted 42,379 people named McIntosh in 2010, about 1 in 7.8 thousand residents.
How common is McIntosh compared with other names?
In Jamaica, McIntosh is the 80th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about McIntosh?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mcintosh

The 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, “McIntosh” — the 80th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how McIntosh parses inside a full name →