McDonald

McDonald is the 145th most common surname in the United States, shared by 172,700 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 1,731.

By the numbers

People: 172,700
Rank: 145th
How common: 1 in 1,731
Per 100,000: 57.8

Where the name comes from

Origin Scottish Gaelic

A common spelling variant of MacDonald, from Scottish Gaelic Mac Dhòmhnaill, equivalent to "son of Donald".

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

Who bears the name

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

White, not Hispanic 73.5%
Black, not Hispanic 17.1%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.2%
Hispanic or Latino 3.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called McDonald

Arthur B. McDonald (born 1943)Canadian physicist
Mary Lou McDonald (born 1969)Irish politician, President of Sinn Féin
Christopher McDonald (born 1955)American actor
Audra McDonald (born 1970)American actress and singer
Country Joe McDonald (1942–2026)American musician
Hugh McDonald (born 1950)American bassist
Kevin McDonald (born 1961)Canadian actor and comedian
Ian McDonald (born 1960)British science fiction novelist

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

Surnames like McDonald

Also a first name

McDonald has been given to 605 American babies as a first name since 1913, peaking in 1918. See it as a given name.

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.