Lemuel
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A king mentioned in the Proverbs
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/lɛmjəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lemuel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 5.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 64K
- GYGuyana1 in 19K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 325 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Lemuel is a classic but uncommon biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'devoted to God'. The name is associated with the wise and righteous king from the Book of Proverbs, whose mother taught him the principles of just leadership.
Sources 1
- Biblical Names Compiled Database
How Lemuel is read(measured from records)
Lemuel 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.
- English65%
A king mentioned in the Proverbs.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish17%
Hebrew, 'devoted to God'; used as a given name by Swift.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- Swahili5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Lemuel in Swahili.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Lemuel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 22K | Lemuel | 88 |
| US United States | — | 5,168 | 1 in 64K | 5.2K | Lemuel | 325 |
| GH Ghana | #575 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Lemuel | 16 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 150K | — | Lemuel | 31 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,179 | 1 in 180K | 1.2K | — | 2 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Lemuel | 33 |
| GY Guyana | — | 39 | 1 in 19K | 39 | — | 2 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Lemuel is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Lemuel is a classic but uncommon biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'devoted to God'. The name is associated with the wise and righteous king from the Book of Proverbs, whose mother taught him the principles of just leadership.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Of Hebrew origin, meaning 'for God' or 'belonging to God'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)
- Lemuel Francis Abbottb. 1760GBpainter
- Lemuel Whitmanb. 1780USAmerican politician (1780-1841)
- Lemuel Wilmarthb. 1835USAmerican painter (1835–1918)
- Lemuel Nelson Bellb. 1894USAmerican missionary (1894–1973)
- Lemuel Cornick Shepherd, Jr.b. 1896USUnited States Marine Corps (1896-1990)
- James L. Holloway Jr.b. 1898USnot in their usual nameUnited States admiral (1898–1984)
- James L. Holloway IIIb. 1922USnot in their usual nameAmerican admiral (1922-2019)
- Lem Winchesterb. 1928USnot in their usual nameAmerican recording artist, vibraphonist, jazz musician, police officer (1928–1961)
- Lem Barneyb. 1945USnot in their usual nameAmerican football player (born 1945)
- Lem Dobbsb. 1959USnot in their usual nameBritish-American screenwriter
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 59 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 5.2K | #3,821 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.2K | #7,399 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 765 | #10,923 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 155 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 74 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 39 | #555 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 16 | #3,821 |
| PH Philippines | Tagalog given names (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- Where does the name Lemuel come from?
- Lemuel is a classic but uncommon biblical name of Hebrew origin meaning 'devoted to God'. Recorded by Biblical Names Compiled Database.
- What does the name Lemuel mean?
- In English, A king mentioned in the Proverbs.
- Is Lemuel a male or female name?
- Lemuel 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.
- How do you pronounce Lemuel?
- A machine transcription gives /lɛmjəl/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Lemuel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Lemuel in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lemuel.
- How common is the name Lemuel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,168 people named Lemuel in 2020, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
- How common is Lemuel compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Lemuel is the 575th most common given name of 14,081 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lemuel?
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/lemuelThe 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, “Lemuel” — the 575th most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.