McCloskey
An Irish surname meaning “son of Blosgaidh,” with the old Gaelic name preserved in a later anglicized form.
The #3,336 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 28,704 Americans shares it.
Etymology
McCloskey is an anglicized form of the Irish Mac Blosgaidh, meaning “son of Blosgaidh.” The personal name behind it is old and obscure, and the early writers cited here treated it as a Gaelic surname rather than an English-language word. The spellings McCloskey, MacCloskey, MacCluskey, MacLosky, and related forms all reflect attempts to render the same Irish sound in English spelling.
History
The name is found especially in Irish usage and appears in older surname lists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The sources here group it with variants such as MacCluskey and MacLoskey, showing how freely the spelling shifted before standardization. It is now best known as an Irish-American surname, especially in the United States and in communities with Ulster or northern Irish roots.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older surname compilers sometimes linked McCloskey to other Mac- names, but the forms in these sources show it was already being treated as part of a cluster of Irish variants rather than a single fixed spelling.
From the historical record
“M MacCloskey. From the Irish Ma Blosgaidh ; a p.n. MacCormack. Irish ; son of Cot i.e. (charioteer)”
— British Family Names: their origin and meaning (2nd ed.)