McFee

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from Gaelic MacDhubhshith ‘son of Dubhshithe’ (black man of peace); first attested Thomas Macdoffy 1296

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: St Kitts & Nevis, 2026

Pronunciation:

McFee is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 51K(measured from records)
  • KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 54K
  • CACanada≈1 in 120Kfew records

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)

2,068 people, 2010

Record sources
285 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 51K (inferred from the name graph)

St. Vincent & Grenadines

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

from Gaelic MacDhubhshith ‘son of Dubhshithe’ (black man of peace); first attested Thomas Macdoffy 1296

Cited for this meaning 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

McFee 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.

Where McFee is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2,0681 in 161K2.1KMcFee285
GB United Kingdom≈460 est.≈1 in 152K—McFee86
CA Canada≈360 est.≈1 in 115K—McFee77
AU Australia≈170 est.≈1 in 157K—McFee41
MY Malaysia≈96 est.≈1 in 372K—McFee2
NZ New Zealand≈68 est.≈1 in 77K—McFee6
IE Ireland≈58 est.≈1 in 93K—McFee3
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines21 in 51K2—2
KN St. Kitts & Nevis11 in 54K1—2

2,068 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)

McFee 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, A surname from Scottish Gaelic.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, from Gaelic ‘son of Duibhshith’

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • variant spelling of McPhee.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
188019001920194019601980William McFee, b. 1881Allan McFee, b. 1913Oonah McFee, b. 1916Andrew McFee, b. 1945Malcolm McFee, b. 1949John McFee, b. 1950Michael McFee, b. 1954Bruce McFee, b. 1961

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)
FormalDear Mcfee,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

13 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting McFee
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.1K#13,372
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.1K#14,447
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202K#14,430
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)20252#260
KN St. Kitts & NevisSt Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 202620261#181
US United Stateswru 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

What does the name McFee mean, and where does it come from?
from Gaelic MacDhubhshith ‘son of Dubhshithe’ (black man of peace); first attested Thomas Macdoffy 1296 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
In which country does McFee have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 2.1 thousand people named McFee, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mcfee.
Where is McFee most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, McFee is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 51 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name McFee?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,068 people named McFee in 2010, about 1 in 161 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about McFee?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mcfee

The 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, “McFee”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how McFee parses inside a full name →