Cooley
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Cooley is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla Chuille; or a reduced form of McCooley; or an anglicization of German Kuhle/Kuhle, meaning a person who lives in a hollow place or depression.
- USUnited States1 in 9.2K◐
- CACanada1 in 12K
- AUAustralia1 in 15K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈47K ◐
- Sources
- 230 ●
- 1 in 5.3K ◐
across 14 countries
326K records
Official registry-verified
Suriname
Meaning & origin●
From Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla Chuille; or a reduced form of McCooley; or an anglicization of German Kuhle/Kuhle, meaning a person who lives in a hollow place or depression.
Sources 3
- Irish first names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world●
Sorted by estimated bearers.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #905 | ≈36K | 295K rec. | 1 in 9.2K | 33K | Cooley | 230 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3.9K | 12K rec. | 1 in 17K | — | Cooley | 66 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈3K | 5.6K rec. | 1 in 12K | — | Cooley | 56 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1.7K | 4.5K rec. | 1 in 15K | — | Cooley | 62 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈495 | 697 rec. | 1 in 13K | — | Cooley | 4 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈424 | 781 rec. | 1 in 12K | — | Cooley | 25 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈394 | 435 rec. | 1 in 12K | — | Cooley | 15 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈248 | 455 rec. | 1 in 439K | — | Cooley | 9 |
| JM Jamaica | #666 | ≈243 | 404 rec. | 1 in 12K | — | Cooley | 4 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈160 | 277 rec. | 1 in 108K | — | Cooley | 12 |
| SR Suriname | #975 | ≈116△ | 9 rec. | 1 in 5.3K | — | Cooley | 1 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈91 | 298 rec. | 1 in 129K | 2 | Cooley | 6 |
Roughly 36K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 9.2K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English327K93%
- Spanish6.7K2%
- Welsh1.8K1%
- Italian1.7K1%
- German1.7K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 327,119 | 93% |
| Spanish | 6,690 | 2% |
| Welsh | 1,788 | 1% |
| Italian | 1,729 | 1% |
| German | 1,681 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Notable people with this name●
- Charles Horton Cooleyb. 1864USAmerican sociologist (1864–1929)
- Hallam Cooleyb. 1895USactor (1895-1971)
- Denton Cooleyb. 1920USAmerican heart surgeon (1920–2016)
- James Cooleyb. 1926USAmerican mathematician (1926-2016)
- Eddie Cooleyb. 1933USAmerican singer-songwriter (1933-2020)
- Thomas F. Cooleyb. 1943USAmerican economist (1943–2021)
- Josh Cooleyb. 1979USAmerican animator and film director
- Chelsea Cooleyb. 1983USAmerican model and actress
- Ryan Cooleyb. 1988CACanadian actor
- Jack Cooleyb. 1991USAmerican basketball player
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).
Evidence●
Attested in 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 33K | #1,054 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 32K | #1,065 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 32K | #983 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 22 | #46,346 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 15 | #97,717 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 9 | #42,323 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 9 | #15,766 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2009 | 5 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5 | #62,157 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1918 | 5 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 4 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 2026-09-06 data build · 25 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Cooley?
- We estimate roughly 47 thousand people bear Cooley (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
- In which country does Cooley have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 36 thousand people bear Cooley in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled cooley.
- Where is Cooley most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cooley is densest in Suriname — about 1 in 5.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Cooley compared with other names?
- In the United States, Cooley is the 905th most common surname of 4,456,294 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Cooley mean?
- Recorded meaning: From Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla Chuille; or a reduced form of McCooley; or an anglicization of German Kuhle/Kuhle, meaning a person who lives in a hollow place or depression.
Query this name via API
curl https://nelma-api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cooleyThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Cooley” — the 905th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-08-31.