Manuela
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: a female given name from Spanish or Portuguese, popular during the second half of the 20th century
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/manwela/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Manuela is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Angola it is the 63rd most common given name.
- ESSpain1 in 377(measured from records)
- PTPortugal≈1 in 447
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 778
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 334 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 372 (inferred from the name graph)
178,058 people, 2022
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Manuella in AT Austria.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a female given name from Spanish or Portuguese, popular during the second half of the 20th century
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Manuela is read(measured from records)
Manuela is one spelling over 4 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.
- Spanish55%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Manuela in Spanish.
- German16%
a female given name from Spanish or Portuguese, popular during the second half of the 20th century
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
weibl. Vom., weibliche Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- Portuguese8.5%
a female given name, masculine equivalent Manuel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English7.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Manuela in English.
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.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Manuela, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Manuela 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #426 | 178,058 | 1 in 1.2K | 178K | Manuela | 174 |
| ES Spain | #109 | 132,788 | 1 in 377 | 137K | Manuela | 182 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 910 | 33 | Manuela | 118 |
| CO Colombia | #165 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 8 | Manuela | 145 |
| PE Peru | #261 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Manuela | 54 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 372 | 5K | Manuella | 10 |
| PT Portugal | #75 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 447 | listed | Manuela | 142 |
| AO Angola | #63 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Manuela | 29 |
| CH Switzerland | #474 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 778 | 18 | Manuela | 54 |
178,058 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; the pt-irn-lista-nomes register; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Manuela is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Manuela är en femininform av → Manuel. -mar Nordisk (germansk) efterled i mansnamn, identisk med fornvästnordiskans mærr (av urnordiskt mārir) ’utmärkt, berömlig’. Det i-omljud, som finns i ordet mærr, förekommer inte i personnamnen på grund av i:ets svagtoniga ställning. Exempel på namn där efterleden ingår är → Hilmer, → Ing(e)mar.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Variante féminine d’Emmanuel; d’origine chaldéenne et druidique, «la force divine nous est intimement associée».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Malorie, Malory
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Manuela Sáenzb. 1797ECEcuadorian revolutionary heroine (1797-1856)
- Mercedes of Orléansb. 1860ESnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Spain
- Mercédès Jellinekb. 1889ATnot in their usual namenamesake of Mercedes-Benz
- Manuela Carmenab. 1944ESSpanish judge and politician, mayor of Madrid
- Bibiana Fernándezb. 1954ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actress, singer, presenter and model
- Manuela Maleevab. 1967BGBulgarian female tennis player
- Manuela Schwesigb. 1974DEGerman politician (SPD), Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
- Manuela Velascob. 1975ESSpanish actress
- Manuela Arcurib. 1977ITItalian actress and model
- Manuela Vellésb. 1987ESSpanish 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)
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 102 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 178K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 177K | #186 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 137K | #27 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 133K | #61 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 61K | #674 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 45K | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 5K | #463 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1K | #186 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 33 | #421 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2024 | 10 | #491 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 8 | #113 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- 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
- How do you pronounce Manuela?
- A machine transcription gives /manwela/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Manuela?
- In the etymology graph, Manuel, Emmanuelle and Emanuela are forms of the same name in other languages; Nela, Manuelita and Manola are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Manuela mean, and where does it come from?
- a female given name from Spanish or Portuguese, popular during the second half of the 20th century Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How common is the name Manuela?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 178,058 people named Manuela in 2022, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Manuela compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Manuela is the 426th most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
- Is Manuela a male or female name?
- Manuela is a female 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.
- In which country does Manuela have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 178 thousand people named Manuela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled manuela.
What do you want to know about Manuela?
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/manuelaThe 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, “Manuela” — the 426th most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.