McClelland
An Irish and Scottish surname from a Gaelic personal name, probably meaning “son of Gille Fhaolain” or a related form, with the family name later standardizing as McClelland.
The #2,564 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 21,909 Americans shares it.
Etymology
McClelland is a surname of Gaelic origin, built on the patronymic prefix Mac/Mc, meaning “son of.” The second element is generally taken to reflect a Gaelic personal name, often connected with forms such as Gille Fhaolain or a related local diminutive, though older scholarship does not agree on a single fully certain derivation. In practice, the name is understood as a Gaelic family-name formation that was later Anglicized in several spellings.
History
The surname is found in both Scotland and Ireland, especially in Ulster, where many Scottish and Irish Gaelic names overlap in form and distribution. In English-language records it settled into spellings such as McClelland and occasionally McCleland or McLelland. The name remained relatively concentrated in Ulster and the Scottish lowland/Galloway belt before spreading more widely through emigration.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In 19th-century surname lists, McClelland is grouped with a cluster of other Ulster-Scottish Mac- names, reflecting how closely related these families were in recordkeeping.
From the historical record
“Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry, and Mona- •McClelland (57), . 66 ghan.”
— Special Report on Surnames in Ireland (numerical strength, derivation, distribution)