Lafferty
surname · Latin script
Meaning: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Fhlaithbheartaigh or Mac Fhlaithbheartaigh ‘descendant (or ‘son’) of Flaithbheartach', a personal name composed of the elementsflaith ‘prince’, ‘ruler’ + beartach ‘
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Lafferty is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- IEIreland≈1 in 15Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 22K
- CACanada≈1 in 29K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 386 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
10,373 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: 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)reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Fhlaithbheartaigh or Mac Fhlaithbheartaigh ‘descendant (or ‘son’) of Flaithbheartach', a personal name composed of the elementsflaith ‘prince’, ‘ruler’ + beartach ‘doer of valiant deeds’. See also Flaherty.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Lafferty 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 | — | 10,373 | 1 in 32K | 10K | Lafferty | 386 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Lafferty | 163 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Lafferty | 117 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Lafferty | 72 |
| IE Ireland | #989 | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Lafferty | 58 |
10,373 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. 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)Lafferty 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, A different form of Laverty.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In English, Perry Francis. TV executive
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)- Walter Laffertyb. 1875USAmerican politician (1875-1964)
- R. A. Laffertyb. 1914USAmerican writer (1914–2002)
- Marcy Laffertyb. 1946USAmerican actress
- Karen Laffertyb. 1948USAmerican singer
- Mur Laffertyb. 1973USAmerican podcaster and writer (born 1973)
- James Laffertyb. 1985USAmerican actor
- Kyle Laffertyb. 1987GBNorthern Irish association footballer
- Daniel Laffertyb. 1989GBNorthern Irish footballer
- Sam Laffertyb. 1995USAmerican ice hockey player
- Kevin Laffertyfilm 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)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 10K | #3,443 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 10K | #3,283 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.8K | #3,562 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Lafferty mean, and where does it come from?
- reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Fhlaithbheartaigh or Mac Fhlaithbheartaigh ‘descendant (or ‘son’) of Flaithbheartach', a personal name composed of the elementsflaith ‘prince’, ‘ruler’ + beartach ‘… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Lafferty have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Lafferty, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lafferty.
- How common is the name Lafferty?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,373 people named Lafferty in 2010, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
- How common is Lafferty compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Lafferty is the 989th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lafferty?
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/laffertyThe 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, “Lafferty” — the 989th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.