Keating
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Keating is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: either from Keat, or from Irish Gaelic Ceitinn, a Gaelicized Anglo-Norman surname denoting origin in an unidentified place.
- IEIreland≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 7.6K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K
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 Keating 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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 441 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈64,000 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)
either from Keat, or from Irish Gaelic Ceitinn, a Gaelicized Anglo-Norman surname denoting origin in an unidentified place.
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)
Keating 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 | — | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Keating | 6 |
| US United States | — | 17,060 | 1 in 19K | 17K | Keating | 441 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | listed | Keating | 198 |
| AU Australia | #696 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Keating | 169 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Keating | 161 |
| IE Ireland | #249 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Keating | 132 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 1,013as Cotting | 1 in 8.3K | 1K | — | 12 |
| JM Jamaica | #344 | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | Keating | 5 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈36 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | listed | Keating | 3 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Keating is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Americanized form of Ceitinn, a Gaelicized form of de Ketyng (probably a habitational name), which was taken to southern Ireland by Anglo-Norman settlers.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, from an Old English personal name Cyting, a derivative of Cyta (see Kite).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Thomas Arthur. US football player
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)
- Larry Keatingb. 1899USAmerican actor (1899–1963)
- Kenneth Keatingb. 1900USAmerican politician and diplomat (1900–1975)
- H. R. F. Keatingb. 1926GBEnglish crime fiction writer (1926–2011)
- Paul Keatingb. 1944AUAustralian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia
- Frank Keatingb. 1944USAmerican politician
- William R. Keatingb. 1952USAmerican politician (born 1952)
- Dominic Keatingb. 1962GBEnglish actor
- Amy Keating Rogersb. 1969USAmerican screenwriter
- Zoë Keatingb. 1972CACanadian avant-garde cellist and composer based in San Francisco
- Ronan Keatingb. 1977IEIrish singer (born 1977)
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 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 17K | #2,121 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 16K | #2,027 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 16K | #2,188 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 16 | #43,070 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Keating mean, and where does it come from?
- either from Keat, or from Irish Gaelic Ceitinn, a Gaelicized Anglo-Norman surname denoting origin in an unidentified place. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Keating have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 64 thousand people named Keating in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled keating.
- How common is the name Keating?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,060 people named Keating in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
- How common is Keating compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Keating is the 249th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Keating?
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/keatingThe same 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), 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, “Keating” — the 249th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.