Cleary

At the 2020 census, 15,419 Americans bore the surname Cleary — 2,306th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 19,400.

By the numbers

People: 15,419
Rank: 2,306th
How common: 1 in 19,400
Per 100,000: 5.2

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Cléirigh (“descendant of the cleric”), from cléireach (“cleric”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Cleary described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 89.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
Black, not Hispanic 2.8%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.6%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.3%

Notable people called Cleary

Beverly Cleary (1916–2021)American writer of children's books
Daniel Cleary (born 1978)Canadian ice hockey player
Bob Cleary (1936–2015)American ice hockey player
Jim Cleary (born 1956)Northern Irish footballer
Jack Cleary (born 1995)Australian rower
Bill Cleary (born 1934)American ice hockey player, coach, college athletic administrator

People named Cleary with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Cleary

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.