This article looks at how common Buckley is as a last name in Ireland and the United States from the 19th century to the present day.
You’ll learn the meaning and origins of the Buckley surname while exploring some notable and famous people that held it.
I use census records, emigration lists, and military archives to uncover fascinating patterns. If you’re studying your genealogy, check out my sources at the end of the post so you can do your own research.
How Common Is Buckley As A Surname In Ireland?
Detailed current statistics about surnames are not publicly released by the Irish government. Instead, they offer the ten most frequently occurring surnames among newborns in the previous year. Buckley doesn’t make the grade for that!
Thankfully, an Irish genealogist named Seán Murphy studied the names in national phone books published in the 1990s. His estimates aren’t as accurate as a census, but they are still a good way to get an estimate of numbers.
Buckley was ranked 80 in the top one hundred names in this decade with a total of 10,400 entries.
This graphic shows how it ranks compared to the 1st, 33rd, 66th, and 100th entries in the survey.
Buckley In The Early 1900s
The Irish have traditionally emigrated to Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia in recent centuries. They were driven by various factors like political upheaval, scarcity of work, and food deprivation.
The Great Irish Famine, which happened from 1845 to 1852, caused the largest wave of emigration. The potato blight was a disaster for Ireland because it destroyed the main food source for a large proportion of the people.
So, let’s focus on the early 1900s.
I used online archives to calculate the total numbers by surname. I consider these estimates due to some percentage of transcription errors. So, I’ve rounded the numbers to the nearest fifty.
There were 6,750 residents named Buckley on the island in 1911.
Ten years earlier, Buckley had about 6,750 residents in the 1901 census.
Population Estimates In The 1890s
A study of Irish surnames was conducted in 1890 by the head of the Civil Registrations Office. It was published as a “Special Report on Surnames In Ireland.”
The survey estimated that there were about 8,200 people named Buckley in the country.
Emigration To America After The Irish Famine
The Irish have traditionally emigrated to Britain, the U.S., Canada, and Australia in recent centuries. They were driven by various factors like political upheaval, scarcity of work, and food deprivation.
The Great Irish Famine, which happened from 1845 to 1852, caused the largest wave of emigration. The potato blight was a disaster for Ireland because it destroyed the main food source for a large proportion of the people.
I studied the Buckley name in the shipping passenger lists arriving in New York during this period. The departures were from both Ireland and England.
This picture shows how the numbers rose and fell in the years after the famine:
Estimating Rank In The United States
The United States publishes high-level details from the 2010 census that includes the totals of surnames with over one hundred bearers.
I reviewed the list to identify which names are predominantly Irish in origin to provide an estimate of the rankings of Irish names in the United States.
Historically, some Irish families with Gaelic surnames took English-sounding names as translations under the influence of colonization.
As these names also have English origins, they will have been brought to the United States by both British and Irish immigrants. Because the census doesn’t ask about specific European origin (e.g. England vs Ireland), it’s impossible to identify the proportion with Irish heritage.
For the purpose of this website, I’ve mostly excluded names that have varying origins when considering “Irish” names in the U.S. censuses.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s look at how Buckley ranks in America.
How Common Is Buckley As A Last Name In The United States?
Based on the 2010 U.S. census, the name Buckley ranks about 834 among Irish names in America with 41,348 bearers.
Buckley In Historic Census Years
It is fascinating to examine how the prevalence of a surname shifts over the course of time in a country as young as the United States. As well as immigration, this reflects other demographic shifts across the nation. Factors include higher child mortality rates and longer life expectancy.
The historic census records have been transcribed and digitized. I used online archives to run counts of surname populations.
But the totals can’t be exactly accurate due to transcription errors. So, I’ve rounded the numbers to the nearest 50 in the graph below.
This picture shows the numbers every twenty years from 1860 to 1940:
These are the numbers in the graph:
- 1860: 6,950
- 1880: 13,850
- 1900: 18,700
- 1920: 22,250
- 1940: 25,800
Buckley In World War II
Approximately 8.3 million men and women joined the United States Army during World War II. Many had Irish ancestry. Some had been born in Ireland before leaving the country.
I found registration records for 1,529 soldiers named Buckley who enlisted between 1938 and 1946.
Of these, there were eighteen born in Ireland.
Buckley Surname: Meaning And Origin
Buckley is an anglicization of the Gaelic surname Ó Buachalla, which means “descendant of Buachaill”. The word “buachaill” means “boy” in Irish.
One early branch was in southern Cork. Another was in the eastern province of Leinster around Kilkenny and Offaly.
You should also know that the name can have English origins. There are several towns with the name in England, and early bearers from those places would take the name.
Famous Or Historic People Named Buckley
Here are some notable people with the family name:
- Samuel Buckley (1809-1884): American botanist and geologist who discovered many plant species including the genus Buckleya. Mount Buckely in the Great Smokey Mountains is also named after him.
- Christopher Buckley (1845-1922): the father of “Blind Boss Buckley” emigrated from Ireland. The young Buckley owned saloons in San Francisco and was a considerable force within the city’s Democratic Party despite going blind in early adulthood.
- Elizabeth Buckley (1913-2003): American nurse who served in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps in both World War One and Two. She retired at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Sources
External Research
The Ireland 1990s estimates are from Seán J. Murphy’s research paper.
The population estimates of 1890 are based on the “Special Report on Surnames in Ireland“, published in 1909.
The population figures for the 2010 U.S. Census come from a file provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Internal Research
Some of the population numbers are based on my own research and calculations using online archives. I’ve rounded those numbers to the nearest 50 to account for transcription errors and other technical issues with online databases of this type.
The Irish census estimates for 1901 and 1911 are my calculations based on the Irish National Archives
I plotted the emigration figures from 1845 to 1854 based on calculations from the archives of the New York Passenger Lists (1820-1957).