McDowell
surname · Latin script
Meaning: different forms of McDougall
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/məkdawəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McDowell is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 6.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 6.8K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 7.2K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 494 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iceland, 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)
different forms of McDougall
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
McDowell 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 | — | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | McDowell | 8 |
| US United States | #552 | 49,217 | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | McDowell | 494 |
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | McDowell | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | #701 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | listed | McDowell | 218 |
| KP North Korea | #387 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | McDowell | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | #465 | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | — | McDowell | 81 |
| IS Iceland | #734 | ≈83 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | McDowell | 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; the bbc-pronouncing-dictionary-british-names register. 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)
McDowell 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, Roddy, British actor
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)
- Irvin McDowellb. 1818USAmerican general (1818–1885)
- Nelson McDowellb. 1870USAmerican actor (1870-1947)
- Claire McDowellb. 1877USactress (1877-1966)
- Fred McDowellb. 1904USAmerican blues musician (1904–1972)
- Josh McDowellb. 1939USAmerican writer
- John McDowellb. 1942ZASouth African philosopher and academic
- Malcolm McDowellb. 1943GBBritish actor (born 1943)
- Michael McDowellb. 1950USAmerican novelist and screenwriter (1950-1999)
- Charlie McDowellb. 1983USAmerican film director
- Lily Collinsb. 1989GBnot in their usual nameBritish-American actress (born 1989)
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 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 49K | #702 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 48K | #652 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 47K | #704 |
| GB United Kingdom | BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names | — | — | — |
| 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 McDowell mean, and where does it come from?
- different forms of McDougall Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce McDowell?
- A machine transcription gives /məkdawəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does McDowell have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 106 thousand people named McDowell in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcdowell.
- How common is the name McDowell?
- In the United States, the national register counted 49,217 people named McDowell in 2010, about 1 in 6.8 thousand residents.
- How common is McDowell compared with other names?
- In North Korea, McDowell is the 387th most common surname of 2,439 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about McDowell?
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/mcdowellThe 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, “McDowell” — the 387th most common surname in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.