McFerrin
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fearain ‘son of Feardn\ a personal name from a diminutive of fear ‘man’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/məkˈfɛɹən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
McFerrin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 239K(measured from records)
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 112K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 194K
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
- 219 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 112K (inferred from the name graph)
1,389 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Algeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)1. Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fearain ‘son of Feardn\ a personal name from a diminutive of fear ‘man’. 2. Anghcized form of Gaelic Mac Mhearain ‘son of Meardn', a personal name derived from mear ‘swift’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)McFerrin 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 | 1,389 | 1 in 239K | 1.4K | McFerrin | 219 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 112K | — | McFerrin | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 523K | — | McFerrin | 22 |
| CA Canada | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 468K | — | McFerrin | 14 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈81 est. | ≈1 in 403K | — | McFerrin | 2 |
| SG Singapore | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 194K | — | McFerrin | 1 |
| IE Ireland | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 250K | — | McFerrin | 1 |
1,389 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling mcferrin. 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 2020. 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)McFerrin 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.
from Mac Mhearáin, see McFerran .
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
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 McFerrinb. 1921USopera singer (1921–2006)
- Bobby McFerrinb. 1950USAmerican jazz vocalist and composer (born 1950)
- Taylor McFerrinb. 1953USAmerican DJ
- Melissa McFerrinb. 1960USAmerican basketball player and coach
- Madison McFerrinb. 1991American singer–songwriter
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)8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4K | #19,062 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,087 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #19,456 |
| 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 McFerrin come from?
- 1. Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fearain ‘son of Feardn\ a personal name from a diminutive of fear ‘man’. 2. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce McFerrin?
- A machine transcription gives /məkˈfɛɹən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name McFerrin mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Fearain ‘son of Feardn\ a personal name from a diminutive of fear ‘man’.
- In which country does McFerrin have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named McFerrin, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled McFerrin.
- How common is the name McFerrin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,389 people named McFerrin in 2010, about 1 in 239 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about McFerrin?
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/mcferrinThe 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, “McFerrin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.