Fitzgerald

surname · Latin script

Meaning: 'son of Gerald'; Norman family in Ireland from 1170, leading lines in Kildare/Leinster and Desmond (Kerry and Cork)

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

/fɪtsˈdʒɛɹəɫd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Fitzgerald is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 44th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 917(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 2.1K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 2.9K

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)

75,356 people, 2010

Sources
551 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 917 (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

'son of Gerald'; Norman family in Ireland from 1170, leading lines in Kildare/Leinster and Desmond (Kerry and Cork).

Sources 1

  • Irish family names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Fitzgerald, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Fitzgerald 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 Fitzgerald is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#36075,3561 in 4.4K75KFitzgerald551
GB United Kingdom#288≈21,000 est.≈1 in 3.1KlistedFitzgerald285
AU Australia#170≈12,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K1Fitzgerald222
EG Egypt—≈12,000 est.≈1 in 8.5K—Fitzgerald11
CA Canada#298≈10,000 est.≈1 in 3.7K3Fitzgerald235
IE Ireland#44≈5,600 est.≈1 in 917—Fitzgerald161
NZ New Zealand#229≈1,700 est.≈1 in 2.9K—Fitzgerald115
IS Iceland#447≈130 est.≈1 in 2.8K—Fitzgerald9

75,356 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; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Fitzgerald is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Fitz-Gerald

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Fitz-Gerald, Fitzgérald

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Fitz-Gerald, Fitzgérald

  • Hindi surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Fitz-Gerald

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Ireland

    Also written Fitz-Gerald

  • Chinese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, China, Ireland

    Also written Fitz-Gerald

  • Vietnamese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Vietnam, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Fitz-Gerald

68 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)

Fitzgerald is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, 'Son of Gerald'; Norman family name used as a first name.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • name Gerald; see Garrett. The name was formed by the Fitzgibbon Flax 185 addition of the ANF prefix fi(t)z son of (L filius) to the given name. The Gaelicized form Mac Gearailt is com¬ mon in the Gael.-speaking areas of W Kerry. ‘Generous’, ‘Hospitable’ (from flaith(eamh) prince, ruler + beartach acting, behaving). Vars.: 0’Fla(g)herty, Flagherty, Flaverty, Flarity.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • name Gerald’, see Garrett. The name was formed by the addition of the ANF prefix son of (L, filius) to the given name. The Gaelicized form Mac Gearailt is common in the Gael.-speaking areas of W Kerry.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, A Hiberno-Norman surname originating as a patronymic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, 'son of Gerald (see Garrett)'.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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)

1850190019502000Barry Fitzgerald, b. 1888Francis Scott Fitzgerald, b. 1896Zelda Fitzgerald, b. 1900Geraldine Fitzgerald, b. 1913Penelope Fitzgerald, b. 1916Ella Fitzgerald, b. 1917Frances Scott Fitzgerald, b. 1921Peter Fitzgerald, b. 1960John Fitzgerald, b. 1960Willa Fitzgerald, b. 1991

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)

FormalDear Fitzgerald,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 58 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Fitzgerald
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201075K#430
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200074K#390
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202073K#442
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Fitzgerald mean, and where does it come from?
'son of Gerald'; Norman family in Ireland from 1170, leading lines in Kildare/Leinster and Desmond (Kerry and Cork). Recorded by Irish family names.
How do you pronounce Fitzgerald?
A machine transcription gives /fɪtsˈdʒɛɹəɫd/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Fitzgerald have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 75 thousand people named Fitzgerald, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fitzgerald.
How common is the name Fitzgerald?
In the United States, the national register counted 75,356 people named Fitzgerald in 2010, about 1 in 4.4 thousand residents.
How common is Fitzgerald compared with other names?
In the United States, Fitzgerald is the 360th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Fitzgerald?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

The 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, “Fitzgerald” — the 360th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Fitzgerald parses inside a full name →