McAfee
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Dhuibhshithe ‘son of Duibhshith', a personal name composed of the elements dubh ‘black’ + sith ‘peace’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈmækəˌfi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McAfee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 27K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 35K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 36K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 403 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 17K (inferred from the name graph)
≈81,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Dhuibhshithe ‘son of Duibhshith', a personal name composed of the elements dubh ‘black’ + sith ‘peace’. Compare Duffy.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
McAfee 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 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | McAfee | 2 |
| US United States | 12,371 | 1 in 27K | 12K | McAfee | 403 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | McAfee | 114 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | McAfee | 81 |
| EG Egypt | ≈920 est. | ≈1 in 114K | — | McAfee | 7 |
| PT Portugal | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | McAfee | 4 |
| IE Ireland | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | McAfee | 27 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | McAfee | 13 |
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)
McAfee is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, ‘son of Duffy (ii)’
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)
- Robert B. McAfeeb. 1784USAmerican politician
- George McAfeeb. 1918USPlayer of American football (1918-2009)
- Mara McAfeeb. 1929USAmerican actress and dancer (1929-1984)
- John McAfeeb. 1945USBritish-American programmer and businessman (1945–2021)
- Annalena McAfeeb. 1948GBBritish writer
- Andrew McAfeeb. 1967USAmerican digital technology research scientist
- Fiona Appleb. 1977USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician (born 1977)
- Anndi McAfeeb. 1979USAmerican actress
- Scott McAfeeb. 1981USAmerican actor
- Pat McAfeeb. 1987USAmerican football player and businessman (born 1987)
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 9 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #2,898 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,789 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,979 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- Where does the name McAfee come from?
- Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Dhuibhshithe ‘son of Duibhshith', a personal name composed of the elements dubh ‘black’ + sith ‘peace’. Compare Duffy. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce McAfee?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmækəˌfi/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name McAfee mean?
- Recorded meaning: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Dhuibhshithe ‘son of Duibhshith', a personal name composed of the elements dubh ‘black’ + sith ‘peace’.
- In which country does McAfee have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 81 thousand people named McAfee in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McAfee.
- How common is the name McAfee?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,371 people named McAfee in 2010, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McAfee?
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/mcafeeThe 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, “McAfee”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.