Rourke
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹɒɹk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rourke is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 31K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 35K
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
- 336 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈17,000 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)
from the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’.
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)
Rourke 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 | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 82K | — | Rourke | 6 |
| US United States | — | 3,757 | 1 in 89K | 3.8K | Rourke | 336 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 2.1K | Rourke | 155 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Rourke | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈860 est. | ≈1 in 44K | 1 | Rourke | 130 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈730 est. | ≈1 in 35K | 1 | Rourke | 101 |
| IE Ireland | #526 | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Rourke | 83 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Rourke 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.
Ruarc, perhaps from ruarc heavy shower of rain. Var.: Rotheram. Patrs.: Groarke (Gael. Mac Ruiarc).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Var. (of 1): Ruffer.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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)
- Constance Rourkeb. 1885USAmerican historian (1885-1941)
- Raymond F. Rourkeb. 1917USAmerican politician (1917–2004)
- Russell A. Rourkeb. 1931USFifteenth Secretary of the Air Force, USA
- John Patrick Rourkeb. 1942ZAbotanist
- Mickey Rourkeb. 1952USAmerican actor and former boxer
- Nancy Rourkeb. 1957USAmerican painter
- Jim Rourkeb. 1957USAmerican football player
- Andy Rourkeb. 1964GBBritish musician (1964–2023)
- Mark Rourkeb. 1968CACanadian diver
- Josie Rourkeb. 1976GBBritish theatre director
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 24 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.8K | #8,728 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.7K | #8,263 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.5K | #8,922 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.1K | #3,469 |
| 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
- 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 Rourke mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Rourke?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹɒɹk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Rourke have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 17 thousand people named Rourke in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rourke.
- How common is the name Rourke?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,757 people named Rourke in 2010, about 1 in 89 thousand residents.
- How common is Rourke compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Rourke is the 526th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rourke?
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/rourkeThe 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, “Rourke” — the 526th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.