Murray

surname · Latin script

Meaning: From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/mɝi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Murray is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 15th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • IEIreland≈1 in 607(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 972
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 972

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)

≈840,000 people, est.

#431 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
595 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 607 (inferred from the name graph)

Ireland, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MurrayLatin(measured from records)
머리Hangul(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)

From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Murray 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 Murray is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈840,000 est.≈1 in 1.7K—Murray41
US United States#108184,9101 in 1.8K185KMurray595
GB United Kingdom#61≈68,000 est.≈1 in 97258Murray340
CA Canada#62≈30,000 est.≈1 in 1.3K1Murray273
AU Australia#61≈26,000 est.≈1 in 97286Murray286
IE Ireland#15≈8,500 est.≈1 in 607—Murray164
GY Guyana—9561 in 785956—8
GD Grenada—1721 in 658172—5
VC St. Vincent & Grenadines—1541 in 658154—7

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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025; Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Murray is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group
  • German surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Austria

    Also written Murray️

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Murräy

94 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Murray is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, From the province/earldom of Moray, Old Gaelic mori ‘sea home’; William de Moravia recorded from 1203.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In English, from the province of Moray, Scotland; first attested William de Moravia 1203 Black

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 Muireadhaigh ‘descendant of Muireadhach’ (the name of several different families in various parts of Ireland), or a shortened form of McMurRAY.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • regional name from Moray in northeastern Scotland, which is probably named with Old Celtic elements meaning ‘sea’ -f ‘settlement’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Transferred use of the Scottish surname, in origin a local name from the region now called Moray. Variant: Moray.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)

190019502000Grace Hopper, b. 1906Joseph Murray, b. 1919Bill Murray, b. 1950Patty Murray, b. 1950Dave Murray, b. 1956Joel Murray, b. 1963Joanne K. Rowling, b. 1965Chad Michael Murray, b. 1981Andy Murray, b. 1987Hannah Murray, b. 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)

FormalDear Mr Murray,
InformalHi Murray,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 79 sources across 42 countries.

Official registers attesting Murray
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010185K#136
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020179K#139
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000178K#123
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025956#97
GD GrenadaGrenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 20252025172#85
VC St. Vincent & GrenadinesElectoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025)2025154#120

Reference works 7

  • 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 given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Murray mean, and where does it come from?
From Moray, northeastern Scotland, probably 'sea settlement'; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Muireadhaigh / Mac Giolla Mhuire. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Murray have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 843 thousand people named Murray in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled murray.
How do you pronounce Murray?
A machine transcription gives /mɝi/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Murray?
In the United States, the national register counted 184,910 people named Murray in 2010, about 1 in 1.8 thousand residents.
How common is Murray compared with other names?
In Ireland, Murray is the 15th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Murray?

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

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, “Murray” — the 15th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Murray parses inside a full name →