Whalen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: different form of Whelan
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wejlən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Whalen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 14K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 557K
- CRCosta Rica1 in 1.3M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 21 (measured from records)
- 1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
24,262 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
different form of Whelan
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)
Whalen 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 | 24,262 | 1 in 14K | 24K | Whalen | 21 |
| ES Spain | 12 | 1 in 4.2M | 12 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 10 | 1 in 557K | 15 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 8 | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | 1 |
| PL Poland | 8 | 1 in 4.8M | 4 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 4 | 1 in 1.3M | 4 | — | — |
24,262 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Grover Whalenb. 1886USNew York City politician (1886–1962)
- Michael Whalenb. 1902USAmerican actor (1902-1974)
- Charles W. Whalenb. 1920USAmerican politician (1920-2011)
- Philip Whalenb. 1923USAmerican poet (1923–2002)
- Sean Whalenb. 1964USAmerican actor
- Michael Whalenb. 1965USAmerican composer, musician, and producer
- Sara Whalenb. 1976USAmerican soccer player
- Lindsay Whalenb. 1982USAmerican Hall of Fame basketball player and coach
- Griff Whalenb. 1990USAmerican football player
- Ben Whalenactor and producer
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 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 24K | #1,470 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 24K | #1,377 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,515 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 12 | #109,635 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 10 | #44,758 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 8 | #45,665 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #243,447 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4 | #245,541 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 4 | #10,048 |
| 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 Whalen mean, and where does it come from?
- different form of Whelan Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Whalen?
- A machine transcription gives /wejlən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Whalen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 24 thousand people named Whalen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled whalen.
- Where is Whalen most common?
- Whalen is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 14 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Whalen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 24,262 people named Whalen in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Whalen?
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/whalenThe 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, “Whalen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.