Cela
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: obsolete spelling of cilla
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/θela/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cela is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 32K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 106K
- UYUruguay1 in 16K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 119 (measured from records)
- 1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
obsolete spelling of cilla
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Cela is read(measured from records)
Cela is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish53%
obsolete spelling of cilla
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English16%
Camilo Jose, Spanish author (Nobel
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Albanian7.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Cela in Albanian.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cela counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 29K | listed | Cela | 20 |
| ES Spain | 1,576 | 1 in 32K | 1.6K | Cela | 102 |
| US United States | 637 | 1 in 522K | 847 | Cela | 119 |
| AR Argentina | 428 | 1 in 106K | 428 | Cela | 37 |
| PH Philippines | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 392K | — | Cela | 10 |
| UY Uruguay | 214 | 1 in 16K | 214 | Cela | 14 |
| SE Sweden | 116 | 1 in 88K | 116 | — | 3 |
| IS Iceland | ≈4 est. | ≈1 in 86K | 1 | — | — |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Cela is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Kurdish, Exalted
as a wordkurdi.sh Kurdish personal names dictionary
In Portuguese, cell (building)
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
In Latin, second-person singular present active imperative of cēlō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Czech, cell (room in a prison for containing inmates)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Alfonso Cela Vieitob. 1885ESSpanish torero (1885-1932)
- Camilo José Celab. 1916ESSpanish writer (1916–2002)
- Jorge C. Trulockb. 1932ESnot in their usual name1932-
- Francisco Rivera Celab. 1941ESSpanish journalist
- Paloma Celab. 1943ESSpanish actor and model (1943-2019)
- Izolda Celab. 1960BRBrazilian psychologist, pedagogue and politician
- Manuel Celab. 1966ESSpanish organist (1966-)
- Rubén Celab. 1979ESSpanish politician
- Ana Celab. 1983ESSpanish actor
- Eva Celab. 1995ITItalian actress
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 41 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 324 | #27,579 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7 | #27,579 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 5 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4 | #47,397 |
| IS Iceland | Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry) | 2026 | 1 | — |
| UY Uruguay | Montevideo Open Data — Nombres por año y sexo (1940–2012) | 1955 | 1 | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cela mean, and where does it come from?
- obsolete spelling of cilla Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Cela?
- A machine transcription gives /θela/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Cela have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.1 thousand people named Cela in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cela.
- Where is Cela most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cela is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 16 thousand people — even though Italy holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Cela?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,576 people named Cela, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cela?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/celaThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cela”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.