O'Dea
surname · Latin script
Meaning: O Deaghaidh; sept of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, Dublin
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/oʊdiː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
O'Dea is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 21K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 106K
- USUnited States1 in 112K
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)
- Sources
- 238 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
2,968 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Odea in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IT Italy and 2 more.
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)
O Deaghaidh; sept of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, Dublin
Sources 1
- Irish family names
Where in the world(measured from records)
O'Dea 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 | — | 2,968 | 1 in 112K | 3K | Odea | 238 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | O'Dea | 106 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 339K | — | Odea | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 106K | 1.1K | Odea | 89 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 165K | — | Odea | 5 |
| IE Ireland | #702 | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | O'Dea | 70 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 65K | — | O'Dea | 26 |
| JM Jamaica | — | ≈39 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Odea | 1 |
2,968 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Pat O'Deab. 1872USnot in their usual nameAustralian sportsman (1872-1962)
- Jimmy O'Deab. 1899IEnot in their usual nameactor, pantomimist, musician (1899-1965)
- Joseph O'Deab. 1903IEnot in their usual nameIrish actor
- Denis O'Deab. 1905IEnot in their usual nameIrish actor (1905–1978)
- Larry O'Deab. 1944AUnot in their usual nameAustralian professional wrestler and promoter
- Judith O'Deab. 1945USnot in their usual nameactress
- Brian O'Deab. 1948IEnot in their usual nameCanadian drugsmuggler
- Willie O'Deab. 1952IEnot in their usual nameMember of Dáil Éireann (Fianna Fáil, Limerick City)
- Mike O'Deab. 1973USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Darren O'Deab. 1987IEnot in their usual nameIrish footballer
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 8 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 1.1K | #6,092 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 O'Dea mean, and where does it come from?
- O Deaghaidh; sept of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, Dublin Recorded by Irish family names.
- How do you pronounce O'Dea?
- A machine transcription gives /oʊdiː/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does O'Dea have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.0 thousand people named O'Dea, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled odea.
- How common is the name O'Dea?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,968 people named O'Dea in 2010, about 1 in 112 thousand residents.
- How common is O'Dea compared with other names?
- In Ireland, O'Dea is the 702nd most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about O'Dea?
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/o'deaThe 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, “O'Dea” — the 702nd most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.