McCarthy

At the 2020 census, 80,108 Americans bore the surname McCarthy — 395th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 3,731.

By the numbers

People: 80,108
Rank: 395th
How common: 1 in 3,731
Per 100,000: 26.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 89.7%
Hispanic or Latino 3.4%
Black, not Hispanic 3.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called McCarthy

Carolyn McCarthy (1944–2025)American politician

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

Surnames like McCarthy

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.