McClain
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Variant of Scottish or Irish McLean
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 2 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/məˈkɫeɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McClain is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 6.9K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 11K
- CACanada≈1 in 12K
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)
- Record sources
- 487 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.9K (inferred from the name graph)
48,165 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Variant of Scottish or Irish McLean.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)McClain 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 | #539 | 48,165 | 1 in 6.9K | 48K | McClain | 487 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | McClain | 90 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | McClain | 18 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | McClain | 5 |
| DZ Algeria | — | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | McClain | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | McClain | 94 |
| IE Ireland | #752 | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | McClain | 10 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | — | McClain | 3 |
48,165 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling mcclain. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Thaddeus McClainb. 1876USAmerican sprinter, long jumper and hurdler (1876–1935)
- Ted McClainb. 1946USAmerican basketball player
- Katrina McClainb. 1965USAmerican basketball player (born 1965)
- Lisa McClainb. 1966USAmerican politician (born 1966)
- Cady McClainb. 1969USAmerican actress
- Johnathan McClainb. 1970USAmerican television actor
- Anne McClainb. 1979USAmerican astronaut
- Isaiah Rashadb. 1991USnot in their usual nameAmerican rapper from Tennessee
- Sierra McClainb. 1994USsister of China Anne McClain
- China Anne McClainb. 1998USAmerican actress and singer (born 1998)
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 48K | #722 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 46K | #734 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 46K | #688 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 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 McClain mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant of Scottish or Irish McLean. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce McClain?
- A machine transcription gives /məˈkɫeɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McClain have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 48 thousand people named McClain, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McClain.
- Where is McClain most common?
- McClain is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.9 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name McClain?
- In the United States, the national register counted 48,165 people named McClain in 2010, about 1 in 6.9 thousand residents.
- How common is McClain compared with other names?
- In the United States, McClain is the 539th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McClain?
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/mcclainThe 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, “McClain” — the 539th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.