Seamus
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Seamus is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Irish form of James, from Jacob; also associated with St James.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 24K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 26K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 339 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)
6,955 people, 2020
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)
Irish form of James, from Jacob; also associated with St James.
Sources 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Seamus 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 6,955 | 1 in 48K | 6.9K | Seamus | 339 |
| CN China | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 323K | — | Seamus | 8 |
| IE Ireland | #138 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 46 | Seamus | 131 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 11 | Seamus | 183 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 3 | Seamus | 136 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 42K | 10 | Seamus | 56 |
6,955 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Seamus is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Irish Gaelic form of James
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Seamus Mallonb. 1936GBIrish politician (1936–2020)
- Seamus Heaneyb. 1939IEIrish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer (1939–2013)
- Seamus Deaneb. 1940GBIrish writer and critic (1940-2021)
- Seamus McGarveyb. 1967GBIrish cinematographer
- Seamus Blackleyb. 1968USAmerican video game designer
- Seamus Blakeb. 1969GBCanadian jazz saxophonist
- Seamus O'Reganb. 1971CACanadian broadcast journalist
- Seamus Deverb. 1976USAmerican actor
- Seamus O'Connorb. 1997USIrish snowboarder
- Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrickb. 1998USAmerican actor
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 33 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6.9K | #3,142 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 154 | — |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2017 | 46 | #134 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 22 | #3,142 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 11 | #185 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 10 | #352 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2001 | 10 | — |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2014 | 3 | — |
| AU Australia | SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present) | 2016 | 1 | #787 |
| IE Ireland | CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) | 2019 | — | — |
| IE Ireland | Irish First Names (Coghlan, 1985) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | The Penguin Book of Baby Names (David Pickering) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Seamus mean, and where does it come from?
- Irish form of James, from Jacob; also associated with St James. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Is Seamus a male or female name?
- Seamus is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Seamus?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,955 people named Seamus in 2020, about 1 in 48 thousand residents.
- How common is Seamus compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Seamus is the 138th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Seamus have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.0 thousand people named Seamus, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled seamus.
What do you want to know about Seamus?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/seamusThe 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, “Seamus” — the 138th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.