Carney

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Carney is a surname, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 32nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’.

rarermore common
  • ISIceland1 in 222◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 229
  • AUAustralia1 in 238

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.3M ●

across 11 countries

#169 ●

of 16M given names

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
602 ●

12M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 51 ◐

Czechia

Spellings & scripts●

KarenLatin · English●12M records
קרןHebrew · Hebrew●98K records
คาเรนThai · Thai●112 records
카렌Hangul · Korean●4 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Karen in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 20 more, Keren in CR Costa Rica, MX Mexico, PE Peru and 1 more and קרן in IL Israel, FR France.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’

Sources 1

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

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Carney is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#32906,523789K rec.—6Karen303
US United States#39880,7569.7M rec.1 in 378881KKaren602
AU Australia#30483,756341K rec.—5Karen275
CA Canada#31274,818262K rec.—3Karen275
CZ Czechia—208,144△1 rec.1 in 51208K—2
PH Philippines#128139,289116K rec.——Karen183
IL Israel#98104,567144K rec.—4.3Kקרן97
BR Brazil—77,698△1.7K rec.1 in 2.7K78KKaren75
DE Germany#32165,93662K rec.—1Karen212
IT Italy#14465,08565K rec.—3Karen130
EC Ecuador#18951,267△1.6K rec.1 in 33051KKaren72
VE Venezuela#68934,6681.7K rec.——Karen22

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English340K84%
  • 11K3%
  • Spanish10K3%
  • Welsh6.5K2%
  • Portuguese5.2K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English339,77884%
11,0353%
Spanish10,1983%
Welsh6,4792%
Portuguese5,1891%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Carney is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname1.8K records spelled Carney8 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Qarni, কারনি

  • Greek surname839 records spelled Carney3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Καρνει, Karnei

52 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●

Carney is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • ‘descendant of Cathamach’, a byname meaning ‘Warlike’. Vars.: (O’)Caherny, O’Camey. Many present-day bearers of these names descend from Tadhg O Catharnaigh, who was killed in battle in 1084. He was nicknamed An Sionnach 'The Fox’, and for this reason the surname has also been Anglicized as Fox.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • ‘descendant of Catharnach', a byname meaning ‘Warlike’. Vars.: (O’)Caherny, O’Carney.

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In English, Art, US actor

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Guerrero victorioso

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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.

Over time●

05101520192019401960198018 · 1918

Show as table
Carney in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1911–1995
Yearrecords
19115
19128
19139
191514
19167
19179
191818
19197
192014
192113
192217
192312
19245
192510
192610
192711
19287
19295
19309
19319
19328
19336
193410
19357
193610
193713
193811
193912
19407
194110
19426
19437
19449
19457
194610
19477
19485
194912
19507
195113
19529
19539
19546
195511
19579
19589
195912
19615
19635
19666
19796
19806
19825
19896
19905
19946
19956

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 57 years between 1911–1995. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

190019201940196019802000Art Carney, b. 1918John C. Carney, b. 1956Mark Carney, b. 1965Jay Carney, b. 1965Diana Fox, b. 1965John Carney, b. 1972Patrick Carney, b. 1980Reeve Carney, b. 1983David Carney, b. 1983Karen Carney, b. 1987

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 32 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Carney
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201033K#1,066
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200032K#984
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202032K#1,089
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020249#25,678
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020119#25,678
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—49#45,576
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—49#45,014
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200825#41,229
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—25#168,311
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196123—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)197122—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—21#46,833

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 109 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Carney?
We estimate roughly 1.3 million people bear Carney (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Carney have the most bearers?
Carney is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled karen.
Where is Carney most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Carney is densest in the Czechia — about 1 in 51 people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
How common is Carney compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Carney is the 32nd most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
What does the name Carney mean?
Recorded meaning: from Irish Gaelic Ó Catharnaigh, ‘descendant of Catharnach’, a nickname meaning ‘warlike’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/carney

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Carney” — the 32nd most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Carney parses inside a full name →