Carey
An old English and Irish surname that can be either a place-name name or a spelling variant of Carew.
The #601 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 5,482 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Carey has more than one possible source. In English records it is often treated as a variant of Carew, a Norman family name found in medieval forms like De Carru; some writers also connect it with the West Country place-name Cary/Kari. Separately, the Irish surname Carey is commonly linked to Gaelic roots and may have been influenced by later anglicized spellings, so the name is not from a single origin everywhere it appears.
History
English Carey/Carew lines were established in the West of England and the surname was sometimes pronounced the same way as Cary. Because of that, older writers frequently treated Carey and Carew as interchangeable, though the exact relationship is not always straightforward. In Ireland, Carey also became a common surname through independent Gaelic anglicization, which helped the name spread more widely in modern times.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Some 19th-century surname writers explicitly noted that the West Country family of Carew pronounced its name like Carey, which is why the two names were often confused.
From the historical record
“name, which circ. 1300 was spelt De Carru. CAREY. The Carews of the West of England pronounce their name as if written Carey, and hence the surnames have been accounted identical. See Anecdote in Eng. Sum. ii. 30. See, however, CarJ^ CARGILL. A parish in Perthshire. CARL. CARRAL. CARLIN. Foreign modifications of…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom