Craig

given name · English · Latin script

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

Craig is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is the 93rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: person living by a steep or precipitous rock, from Gaelic creag.

rarermore common
  • AUAustralia1 in 398◐
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 468
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 569

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

≈245K ●

across 7 countries

#637 ●

of 16M given names

Sources
574 ●

4.8M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.4K ◐

United States

Meaning & origin●

person living by a steep or precipitous rock, from Gaelic creag

Sources 1

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

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Craig is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom#93363,535343K rec.—6Craig290
AU Australia#69291,571216K rec.—81Craig300
US United States#153244,2283.8M rec.1 in 1.4K244KCraig574
CA Canada#15086,838105K rec.—3Craig238
ZA South Africa#11819,83620K rec.——Craig153
NZ New Zealand#3418,30217K rec.—12Craig160
IT Italy#42615,94820K rec.——Craig62
DE Germany#96911,42014K rec.——Craig122
IE Ireland#12510,5229.5K rec.—11Craig116
RU Russia—8,00310K rec.——Craig57
PH Philippines—6,7187.8K rec.——Craig72
EG Egypt#8235,1036.5K rec.——Craig21

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

Languages●

  • English4M88%
  • Spanish132K3%
  • 53K1%
  • German34K1%
  • French29K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English4,048,83588%
Spanish131,8933%
52,6721%
German34,1361%
French29,1911%

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◐

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

  • Spanish given name182K records spelled Craig2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, United Kingdom, Argentina

  • Portuguese given name34K records spelled Craig2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, Portugal

    Also written Craíg

  • Hindi given name29K records spelled Craig8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written করেইগ, Kreig

86 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●

Craig 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 Scots crag, ‘crag’; early forms mostly Crag. Johannes del Crag witnessed a charter under William I, post 1165.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In Irish, From Gaelic creag, ‘rocks’ or ‘crag’; a Scottish surname used as a first name.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • In French, From Scottish Gaelic creag 'rock, crag'.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In English, Scottish form of CRAGG; first attested John del Crag 1143–1214 Black

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • A Scottish surname which is sometimes used as a first name. From the Gaelic word creag which means ‘rocks’ or ‘crag’. Crevan [Criomhthann] (m) ‘fox’. Aname which seems to have been chiefly used in Leinster.

    as a nameIrish 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.

Over time●

05K10K15K19001950200011K · 1960

Show as table
Craig in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1881–2025
Yearrecords
18815
18865
18887
18907
18925
18948
18965
18995
19009
19016
19025
19037
19045
190616
19078
190810
190912
19108
191111
191226
191337
191438
191572
191657
191759
191889
191957
192077
192180
192281
1923112
192487
192597
192680
1927102
192885
1929106
1930105
1931112
1932106
1933111
1934138
1935170
1936205
1937330
1938321
1939348
1940384
1941539
1942892
19431,132
19441,321
19451,597
19462,471
19473,640
19483,985
19494,328
19504,888
19515,623
19526,187
19536,459
19547,180
19557,448
19567,422
19577,069
19587,272
19599,933
196010,724
196110,235
19628,544
19637,899
19647,752
19657,877
19667,729
19677,311
19687,858
19698,783
19709,364
19717,957
19726,729
19736,295
19745,539
19755,110
19764,732
19774,560
19784,472
19794,029
19804,234
19814,097
19824,018
19834,084
19843,959
19853,952
19863,926
19873,364
19883,306
19893,155
19902,907
19912,399
19922,070
19931,837
19941,507
19951,355
19961,198
19971,098
1998880
1999854
2000808
2001682
2002689
2003607
2004523
2005504
2006463
2007471
2008428
2009368
2010362
2011272
2012291
2013268
2014228
2015237
2016238
2017210
2018161
2019205
2020149
2021125
2022121
2023115
202488
2025102

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 133 years between 1881–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Craig T. Nelson, b. 1944Craig Armstrong, b. 1959Craig C. Mello, b. 1960Craig Pearce, b. 1961Craig Ferguson, b. 1962Doug Emhoff, b. 1964Craig Mazin, b. 1971Rian Johnson, b. 1973Roger Craig Smith, b. 1975Craig David, b. 1981

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 78 sources across 40 countries.

Official registers attesting Craig
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020244K#228
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201093K#332
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200090K#307
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202088K#349
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025338#316
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—270#4,209
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—266#3,877
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020265#228
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—265#2,939
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—192#17,116
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—192#17,038
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—155—

Reference works 6

  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 807 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Craig?
We estimate roughly 245 thousand people bear Craig (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Craig have the most bearers?
Craig is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled craig.
How common is Craig compared with other names?
In the United Kingdom, Craig is the 93rd most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
Is Craig a male or female name?
Craig is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Craig mean?
Recorded meaning: person living by a steep or precipitous rock, from Gaelic creag
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/craig

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, “Craig” — the 93rd most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Craig parses inside a full name →