Doherty
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Irish Gaelic 6 Dochartaigh 'descendant of Dochartaigh', a nickname meaning 'unlucky' or 'hurtful'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Doherty is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 32nd most common surname.
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 3.3K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Doherty itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 471 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈180,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Dougherty in US United States, IS Iceland.
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 Irish Gaelic 6 Dochartaigh 'descendant of Dochartaigh', a nickname meaning 'unlucky' or 'hurtful'
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)
Doherty 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 | — | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Doherty | 10 |
| US United States | #414 | 37,884as Dougherty | 1 in 8.8K | 38K | Dougherty | 471 |
| GB United Kingdom | #216 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | listed | Doherty | 276 |
| CA Canada | #328 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Doherty | 207 |
| AU Australia | #284 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Doherty | 219 |
| IE Ireland | #32 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | listed | Doherty | 155 |
| ES Spain | — | 207 | 1 in 242K | 207 | Doherty | 48 |
| IS Iceland | #587 | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | — | Dougherty | 6 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; the irish-family-names-grehan-1993 register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)
Doherty 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.
In English, O Dochartaigh 'obstructive'; sept of Inishowen Peninsula, Donegal
as a nameIrish family names
In English, Joseph, Irish nationalist
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)
- Reginald Dohertyb. 1872GBEnglish tennis player (1872–1910)
- Peter Dohertyb. 1940AUAustralian immunologist
- Denny Dohertyb. 1940CACanadian singer (1940–2007)
- Ken Dohertyb. 1969IEIrish snooker player
- Shannen Dohertyb. 1971USAmerican actress (1971–2024)
- Pete Dohertyb. 1979GBEnglish musician, actor and poet (born 1979)
- Erin Dohertyb. 1992GBBritish actress
- Matt Dohertyb. 1992IEIrish association football player
- Thomas Dohertyb. 1995GBScottish actor and singer
- Robert DohertyUSAmerican television producer and screenwriter
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 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 28K | #1,264 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 27K | #1,191 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 27K | #1,280 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 207 | #16,159 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 207 | #16,081 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| IE Ireland | Irish Family Names (Grehan, 1993) | — | — | — |
| 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 Doherty mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic 6 Dochartaigh 'descendant of Dochartaigh', a nickname meaning 'unlucky' or 'hurtful' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Doherty have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 184 thousand people named Doherty in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled doherty.
- How common is the name Doherty?
- In Spain, the national register counted 207 people named Doherty, about 1 in 242 thousand residents.
- How common is Doherty compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Doherty is the 32nd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Doherty?
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/dohertyThe 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, “Doherty” — the 32nd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.