Israel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the Hebrew male personal name Yisrael, literally ‘fighter of God’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/israɛl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Israel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- BRBrazil1 in 2.1K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 2.5K
- USUnited States1 in 4.6K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 234 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the Hebrew male personal name Yisrael, literally ‘fighter of God’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Israel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Israel | 37 |
| BR Brazil | #372 | 101,921 | 1 in 2.1K | 102K | Israel | 184 |
| US United States | — | 72,115 | 1 in 4.6K | 71K | Israel | 234 |
| CN China | — | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Israel | 8 |
| ES Spain | — | 20,176 | 1 in 2.5K | 20K | Israel | 85 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 10,232 | 1 in 1.7K | 10K | Israel | 24 |
| CL Chile | — | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 48 | — | 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INEC — civil registry names; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021). 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)
Israel is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Biblical name; name bestowing honour of Jakob.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In German, from Hebrew yiśrā'ēl 'he strives with God' / 'God fights'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from the Hebrew male personal name Yisrael ‘Fighter of God’. In the Bible this is a byname bestowed on Jacob after he had wrestled with the angel at the ford of Jabbok (Genesis 32:24—8).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
name adopted by Jews with reference to the ancient Kingdom of Israel, destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 BC, or to the concept of Jewish nationhood, or, in modem times, to the state of Israel.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Comparatively recent adoption of the Biblical name in Britain among Nonconformists, especially in Wales.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Baal Shem Tovb. 1698UAnot in their usual namePolish founder of Hasidic Judaism (1698–1760)
- Israel Putnamb. 1718USAmerican Revolutionary War general (1718–1790)
- Paul Reuterb. 1816DEnot in their usual nameGerman-Jewish-born British entrepreneur and news agency founder (1816–1899)
- Israel Zangwillb. 1864GBBritish Zionist author (1864–1926)
- Irving Berlinb. 1888USnot in their usual nameAmerican composer and lyricist (1888–1989)
- Ira Gershwinb. 1896USnot in their usual nameAmerican lyricist (1896–1983)
- Israel Gelfandb. 1913USSoviet-American mathematician
- Israel Katzb. 1955ILIsraeli politician, Minister of Defense of Israel
- Israel Kamakawiwoʻoleb. 1959USHawaiian singer (1959–1997)
- Israel Broussardb. 1994USAmerican actor
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 113 sources across 61 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 102K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 101K | #312 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 94K | #492 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 71K | #711 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 20K | #342 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 20K | #151 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 10K | #194 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 6.4K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #711 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 565 | #312 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 109 | — |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Israel mean, and where does it come from?
- From the Hebrew male personal name Yisrael, literally ‘fighter of God’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Israel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 106 thousand people named Israel in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled israel.
- Where is Israel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Israel is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 1.7 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- Is Israel a male or female name?
- Israel is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Israel?
- In the etymology graph, Yisrael, Yisroel and Israhel are forms of the same name in other languages; Izzy is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Israel?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 101,921 people named Israel in 2022, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Israel compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Israel is the 372nd most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Israel?
- A machine transcription gives /israɛl/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What do you want to know about Israel?
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/israelThe 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, “Israel” — the 372nd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.