McKnight

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

McKnight is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: (i) Northern Irish anglicization of Scottish Gaelic Mac Neachtain; (ii) partial translation of Gaelic Mac An Ridire, ‘son of the horseman’.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 6.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 9.8K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K

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)

≈83,000 people, est.

Sources
464 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.8K (inferred from the name graph)

New Zealand, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

(i) Northern Irish anglicization of Scottish Gaelic Mac Neachtain; (ii) partial translation of Gaelic Mac An Ridire, ‘son of the horseman’.

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)

McKnight 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 McKnight is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈83,000 est.≈1 in 17K—McKnight6
US United States#82134,0551 in 9.8K34KMcKnight464
GB United Kingdom—≈6,200 est.≈1 in 11K—McKnight180
EG Egypt—≈3,800 est.≈1 in 28K—McKnight9
CA Canada—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 11K—McKnight156
NZ New Zealand#627≈730 est.≈1 in 6.8K—McKnight69
JM Jamaica#298≈370 est.≈1 in 7.6K—McKnight17
IS Iceland—≈48 est.≈1 in 7.3KlistedMcKnight5

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 is-skra-nofn 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

McKnight is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Mc-Knight

  • Russian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Макнайт, Макнаит

45 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)

McKnight 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.

  • 1. (Ulster) Anglicized form of Scottish Mac Neachtain, which is usually Anglicized as McNaughTON. 2. part translation of Gaelic Mac an Ridire ‘son of the horseman (Gaelic ridire)’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, A surname from Scottish Gaelic.

    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)

19201940196019802000Marian McKnight, b. 1936Robert McKnight, b. 1938Bill McKnight, b. 1940DeWayne McKnight, b. 1954Jeff McKnight, b. 1963Brian McKnight, b. 1969Tony McKnight, b. 1977Bleu Da Vinci, b. 1978Lauren McKnight, b. 1988Scotty McKnight, b. 1988

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 21 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting McKnight
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IS IcelandÞjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry)2026——

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

What does the name McKnight mean, and where does it come from?
(i) Northern Irish anglicization of Scottish Gaelic Mac Neachtain; (ii) partial translation of Gaelic Mac An Ridire, ‘son of the horseman’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does McKnight have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 83 thousand people named McKnight in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcknight.
How common is the name McKnight?
In the United States, the national register counted 34,055 people named McKnight in 2010, about 1 in 9.8 thousand residents.
How common is McKnight compared with other names?
In Jamaica, McKnight is the 298th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about McKnight?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mcknight

The same 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), 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, “McKnight” — the 298th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how McKnight parses inside a full name →