Nägel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nominative plural of Nagel
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Nägel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 8.2K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 8.6K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 396 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈92,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Nagel in US United States, DE Germany, ZA South Africa and 4 more.
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)
nominative plural of Nagel
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nägel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈92,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Nagel | 9 |
| DE Germany | #115 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Nagel | 209 |
| US United States | — | 14,545 | 1 in 23K | 15K | Nagel | 396 |
| ZA South Africa | #816 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Nagel | 71 |
| NL Netherlands | #704 | 2,103 | 1 in 8.2K | 2.1K | Nagel | 67 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 838 | 1 in 10K | 838 | Nagel | 50 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈740 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Nagel | 60 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Adolph Nägelb. 1875DEGerman mechanical engineer (1875–1939)
- Arne NägelDEDr. rer. nat. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2010
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 2 sources across 1 country.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
Reference works 1
- 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
- What does the name Nägel mean, and where does it come from?
- nominative plural of Nagel Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Nägel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 92 thousand people named Nägel in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nagel.
- How common is the name Nägel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,545 people named Nägel in 2010, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Nägel compared with other names?
- In Germany, Nägel is the 115th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nägel?
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/n%C3%A4gelThe 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, “Nägel” — the 115th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.